


Witch-Hunt

by Guede



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Biting, Dubious Morality, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Flirting, Forced Orgasm, Gen, Genital Torture, Ghosts, Guilt, Haunted Houses, Horror, Human Hales, Incest, M/M, Mystery, POV Multiple, Plot Twists, Psychological Drama, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Sexual Violence, The Hale Family, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:07:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 56,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28058919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: In a different Beacon Hills, Chris Argent makes a solo trip to investigate a series of mysterious werewolf deaths, and quickly finds that not all is as he thinks it seems.
Relationships: Chris Argent/Derek Hale, Chris Argent/Melissa McCall, Chris Argent/Peter Hale, Derek Hale/Scott McCall, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 102
Kudos: 72





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is going to go some very dark places. Please note Archive Warnings.

Chris gets to the town in the early part of October, right when Halloween season has just started to hit its stride. It’s still warm enough to walk around with your coat unzipped, but every coffeeshop and café has pumpkin-spice something on the menu and on the weekends, the kids are heading into the woods to drink instead of down south to the beaches.

It's also hunting season. Beacon Hills is a little off the beaten path for that, its preserve too close to the suburbs to offer the kind of ground or quarry that serious hunters savor, but it’s still a good enough excuse that Chris’ Airbnb host doesn’t blink twice when he pulls up in an SUV with a gunrack in the back. “You’re gonna want to keep away from the east side,” he offers as he shows Chris a trail map. “I know it’s zoned, but it’s so close to the haunted house you’re not going to find anything bigger than a rabbit.”

“Noise?” Chris says.

The man nods. “Noise and lights, for the whole month. But it’s a good one, if you’re into that kind of thing—I take my nephews every year.”

“How old are they?” Chris asks politely.

“Oldest is fifteen, and he says it’s better than those _Saw_ movies. They do let you get closer than you’d think. Kind of always surprised me, honestly,” the man says. “You’d wonder about someone getting really scared and punching out one of the actors, if you worked there.”

“Huh,” Chris says, folding up the map. “Well, maybe if the deer aren’t coming out for me. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to one.”

“My sister’s on the PTO board with one of the people who run the place. If you want to, just DM me, I can get you a discount,” his host immediately offers.

Chris thanks him, appreciative but not too interested, and then goes into the guesthouse he’s renting to unpack. The guns stay in their boxes, aside from one mediocre rifle that won’t pain him too much to lose if it comes to it, while the crossbow gets oiled and calibrated before he sets it back in its case. It’s only day one: he’s just going out looking.

The center of town isn’t memorable. He marks a couple restaurants for later, checks what the Walmart has in stock in its hunting-supply section, and takes a walk through a park by the police station. The cruisers parked outside the station are several years old but decently-maintained, and when one deputy strides outside, she and a passing jogger have what looks like a friendly exchange.

A couple blocks down from center, it gets a little seedier, as these kinds of towns go. A pawnshop, a couple tattoo/piercing parlors, bars for students from the local college. One bar with enough grot visible from the outside to qualify as a dive, though it’s still got one IPA on tap. Walking through it takes Chris about ten minutes, and at that point he’s nearly on the outskirts of town.

There’s a sign planted in the median, its wire legs a little thicker than the usual lawn sign. _Hale House of Horrors_ , it proclaims in blood-red gothic lettering against a black background. In smaller letters underneath, the sign provides directions.

Chris doesn’t walk up, or take a photo, or anything like that. He just takes his time looking at it, and then about turning around, as if he’s just trying to make up his mind where to go next. As he does, he hears some voices coming towards him—young, high-pitched, excited ones.

Across the street is a high school and a car packed with people is making its way down the driveway. The man driving it looks considerably older than a senior, and has an expression as if he wishes he could drive himself away from his company, which consists of a dark-haired girl who keeps turning around to talk to people in the backseat. When the car turns into the street, Chris counts three people in the back but can only see the one closest to him, a boy with curly dark hair and a distracted expression.

They’re heading in the direction of the haunted house sign. Chris turns his back to the car and starts to walk away, but slowly, and when he needs to cross an intersection a block down, he glances over in time to see the car turn where the sign says you should.

He checks his phone. Mid-afternoon. He goes back to where the restaurants are, and starts thinking about dinner.

* * *

Beacon Hills wasn’t on his family’s radar at all until six months ago, when the matriarch of the family put together five seemingly unrelated attacks and the town ended up in the center of them. Unusually, all of the dead victims had been werewolves. Two omegas, but only recently kicked out of their packs, while the other three had been still members in good standing with theirs. At least one pack war had come out of it, and Chris wouldn’t be surprised if more of the same was coming.

The Argent Code is clear: they hunt the hunters of the innocent. Some people, including in his own family, might wish they’d use a narrower reading of ‘innocent,’ but so long as Angela Argent is leading them, the Code stands. So here Chris is, spending a couple weeks in town to try and find out what’s going on. They wouldn’t normally intervene in a pack-to-pack dispute, but with so many involved, the risk of violence boiling over into the lives of bystanders is too high.

Two of the packs had been willing to talk to the Argents via intermediaries, and they’d both mentioned that their dead members had had connections to the high school. One had briefly dated a student there, a girl named Cora, while the other had made friends via an online gaming community with someone who claimed to be a Beacon Hills senior.

Cora is a senior this year, and her family owns and operates the famous haunted house. The Hales are locally prominent, several generations in the town with a large landholding just outside of the wildlife preserve. There’s a section on the preserve’s website that talks about how they’d donated part of their property to kickstart it, and across the street from the restaurant where Chris is eating his dinner is an office complex. One of the businesses, an investment company, has the name “Hale” in it.

It's not unheard of for werewolves to work their way up into communities, but it’s rare for them to seem this—Chris can’t quite put his finger on it for a second, and chews his way through more of his burger. It’s not just assimilated, he thinks. It’s how they’ve assimilated. Aside from the haunted house, it seems pretty conservative. 

Chris goes to the haunted house’s website on his phone and checks out ticket availability. All the prime slots are already sold out for a week in advance—the FAQ explains that for fairness, they release tickets in weekly batches—but if he wants to go when there’s still daylight out and the younger kids are probably still stuck eating dinner, he could. Or he could hit up his Airbnb host.

He thinks about it, and then he puts his phone aside and concentrates on his dinner. He wasn’t coming into town thinking this was going to be an easy one to unpack, and the last thing he wants to do is rush it and jump to conclusions.

* * *

When anyone’s on a solo hunt like this, they usually stick to email unless it’s a dire emergency and everyone’s getting pulled out of the field, since the last thing you need when going after people with supernatural hearing is an out-of-place text alert. Chris files his first-day report while he’s having dinner, then returns to his Airbnb for a shower, a little flipping through the local news, and a walk around the property. Not to scope out anything, just to rest his mind and eyes. After a while, catching every detail starts to make both of those burn.

Once he gets back in and checks, he’s got replies from his aunt and his mother. His mother’s email is short, just acknowledging receipt and letting him know that they’re going to have to keep most of their teams up near the Canadian border. He starts to write back if she wants him to come in, then grimaces and deletes that. They had that one before he left.

His aunt’s email is longer, and digs into the facts so far. _I told you both when this first came up, there’s no way we would’ve missed that many generations of werewolves. This doesn’t feel like a regular vendetta to me. Maybe Blackwood was telling the truth about what he thought, but I don’t know how sharp he is these days. I think he was starting to go even before his run-in with Kate._

 _If you thought that, then why didn’t you block me from going_ , Chris types and then deletes. He presses his lips together, then sighs and composes a more diplomatic note back to his aunt.

She’s under a lot of pressure. Both of them are, so long as Kate’s still out there wreaking havoc and ruining the Argent name. For now the community isn’t looking at it as an actual civil war, not with Chris and everyone else with half a brain staying on the side of the actual family leadership, but it’s been going on longer than anyone likes. And Kate’s just…

His aunt’s sent him a second email on the side. _Keep your phone on,_ she says. _That rumor about Kate having something with those separatists was just that: a rumor. But she would go and get knocked up just to spite your mother. If we need you, I’ll call you. We can leave your situation if we need to._

This one Chris doesn’t even try to answer. He drops the phone on the table, not wincing as much as he should when he clatters, and then goes to the nearest window. It’s an okay view, not exactly panoramic, but then, he’s not looking for something in particular to stare at. He just needs to stare at something else.

Eventually Chris’ work ethic kicks in and he moves away from the window, and back over to the dining table. He gets in a good, solid hour pushing around observations and documentation, thinking through this and that skeleton and seeing how it looks when it’s clothed with what he’s got so far.

Still a lot of bare bones, though. He doesn’t have enough.

He’s been here a day.

“Hell,” he mutters to himself, and pushes up from the table.

* * *

Chris’ plan for heading into the town’s “entertainment district” is sketchy at best. He did shower and change his clothes but he didn’t shave, and he realizes just when walking up to the bar that it’d take a lot more steps in his self-care regimen to move him into its target audience. 

He goes inside anyway. At this point his choices are to turn around or to go to what is clearly a college bar next door, and if he’s a little too rough for the queer bar, he’s probably going to terrify the kids. Besides, if he’s honest with himself, he’s not really looking to be understood; he just wants something loud and flashy enough to distract him, with a half-decent beer selection.

The taps are okay. He orders something from the non-IPA part and is heading for a reasonably empty corner when Peter Hale, uncle of Cora and the “Hale” in that investment company, flashing a smile at a small entourage, slips out of a hallway.

Chris is annoyed with himself for staring long enough to get caught at it. Peter’s preferences are all over his social media accounts, and Chris had had it on his list to go checking into that—werewolves generally are far less homophobic than the rest of society, but also, it’s not unusual for them to find it convenient to combine after-dark activities—but later in the week. But anyway, it’s too late now, so he lets his gaze slide past Peter, into the hallway, and spots what looks like a game room.

He checks that out instead of his corner. The half-naked ping-pong is not fitting his mood, but the billiards table is…kind of oddly sedate, compared to the rest of the place. He goes over, exchanges a few pleasantries with the three men and two women already at the tables, and swaps in for the next game.

Pool turns out to be a good choice. The group at the table seems to be mostly paired off, so flirting out of principle more than anything else, and they’re good enough so that he can’t just phone in his shots. He’s just thinking this might be enough to take off his edge when there’s a loud sigh at his elbow.

“Oh, look, His Majesty’s decided to drop by,” drawls one of the women. “I’d bow but my lap’s got a cuter thing than you on it.”

“Helen, you and I both know I value you far more off your knees than on them,” Peter drawls. He’s got a husky voice, and a lazy glint in his eye that dumb people probably think is from the tumbler dangling from his fingers. “Anyway, I thought I’d be a friend and let you know that Barb just walked in the front.”

The woman occupying Helen’s lap curses, and is halfway off by the time Helen, grimacing, grabs her purse to settle up her part of the betting. Banter aside, the quick conversation they have with Peter before heading towards the back sounds civil enough, albeit a little formal. Neither woman popped up in Chris’ search but he’d glimpsed a bank ID card in Helen’s purse so he guesses they move in the same business circles.

“Think it might be getting too dramatic out there for this retired queen,” says the man Chris is currently shooting against. He cocks his head at Chris. “We’ll wrap up this one, and—how long did you say you were in town for?”

“A week, maybe a little over. Depends on how my luck is around here,” Chris says, concentrating on the billiards table. He lets the words come out naturally and doesn’t monitor Peter’s reaction. “Wouldn’t mind settling the tie.”

“James and I usually are in Tuesdays and Fridays, and Fernando—”

“Be around Friday too, unless I catch overtime at the hospital,” Fernando says, throwing on his coat. “If you get bored out there in the woods, come in and get warm here. Mike likes a little excitement, don’t let him fake you out.”

Chris snorts, and nods, and taps the cue ball. He misses on purpose, so that Mike, who’s only got two balls left and both on easy angles, can make his exit. They’re a friendly, normal group, middle-class professionals who’ve been coming to this bar since before the college one next door opened up and it started to try and jazz up to get some overflow. Fernando even pauses by Chris, looking at Peter, as if he wants to say something.

“Don’t worry, I still have my free samples from the sexual wellness event we sponsored,” Peter says dryly, from where he’s still lounging in the doorway. “I think I even have the checklist if he needs one.”

“You should see the checklist Melissa has just for you and your family,” Fernando mutters, and it’s not exactly unfriendly but it’s also not just a joke.

Fernando’s the last of them out, and Chris idly using his stick to roll the balls back into a bunch for the racking when Peter exhales pointedly. “Something I should know?” Chris asks in response. “You waiting for the rest of my gay-bashing posse to show up before you threaten me?”

Peter’s brows lift in a well-manicured arch. “Well, doesn’t that tell me about your childhood trauma. I’m Peter.”

“Chris,” Chris says. That’s the first name he used to book the Airbnb; the last name’s different. Easier not to drop the cover under stress if it’s just the last name he has to worry about, on short trips like this. “So why else are you here?”

“I thought I detected a look of interest,” Peter says, coming further into the room. He stays on the other side of the table, but when he gets near enough, he trails his free hand along the side of the table. “And a new face. And for the record, catty as that bunch is, none of them would be looking to _me_ to defend them from the tourists. They’re leaving because of Barb. Well, really, because of that thing attached to Barb’s hip that she calls a girlfriend.”

Chris eases the rack over the balls. “I don’t really want to know.”

Peter smiles. He’s younger than he comes off online, Chris thinks. The curl in his hair is natural, just regulated with some gel, and the mannerisms are a little studied but it’s out of some kind of insecurity. He’s not circling Chris like a predator, though he probably thinks he is; he’s looking for something, and he’s not entirely sure of himself about if he finds it.

“Good,” Peter says. “So, you came to Beacon Hills for the hunting?”

Though he’s not above looking pleased with himself when Chris blinks hard. Peter gestures with his glass towards Chris’ coat, which he’d stripped off and hung over a stool. It’s an old coat, with some faded strips where he’s had to slap reflective tape.

“I recognize the wardrobe. And the attitude—I personally don’t see the attraction in all the gore, but I’ll admit to shamelessly enjoying the fruits of others’ labor,” Peter says. He’s coming around to Chris’ end of the table. “And there is something about the kind of person it attracts, I suppose.”

Chris lays his stick on the table. He has to hike it twice, to get the end out of the way before Peter fully rounds the corner. “This the part where you say you like it rough?”

Peter smiles again. “Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it?”

* * *

Peter’s classier than a bathroom stall, but not classier than a storeroom full of beer kegs. His hands are pretty direct, going straight to grind against Chris’ jeans fly, but he keeps dipping his head to kiss. And he does have supplies.

“I want you to fuck me, not land me in a clinic,” he groans, arching up as Chris palms around inside his pants. “Don’t tell me you can’t still make it rough enough, with your kind of—”

“Didn’t say I was gonna bareback,” Chris mutters, before twisting him face-first into the wall and then using those supplies to fuck him.

Peter talks a lot. Doesn’t seem to mind much that Chris doesn’t really answer him, just keeps on gasping out little comments in between his moans. He’s shuddering enough that Chris doesn’t take it as an insult to his technique, and when Chris shoves his wrists against the wall and sinks teeth into the join of his throat and shoulder, he does actually shut up for a couple seconds. Nothing but hard, tight, through-the-teeth breathing.

He's not a werewolf, the part of Chris’ head that can’t ever stop hunting realizes. Even if he’s born into it, even if somehow generations of them didn’t make it onto Chris’ family’s radar, he couldn’t just be taking it like he is. Chris bites at Peter again, feels warm semen slick between his fingers and Peter’s sweat-damp underwear, and Peter goes limp into the wall.

They lean together for a few seconds. Peter’s breathing gets slower and deeper, and then he lifts his head. “Your wife?”

Chris realizes his phone is buzzing in his pocket. He must have thumbed it to that mode without thinking about it, while reading his emails. “No, my goddamn au—”

He shuts up, but Peter, if nothing else, seems to have a talent for extrapolating from clues. “Ah, well, still in the line of not wasting your family’s time, I take it,” Peter murmurs.

Chris thinks about biting him again, and not to start a new round. Then, bracing against Peter’s shoulders, he jerks out of the other man. He reaches down to make sure the condom comes out with him. “She’s pissed off I got a divorce. Wanted some kids to spoil.”

Half-truths. They’re easier to remember. 

“Your aunt’s the one complaining about that,” Peter says thoughtfully, after he’s finished hissing and acting annoyed about the rough exit. He twists slightly to pin his pants where they are, halfway to his knees, and then reaches for the napkin Chris is pulling from one of the shelves. “Not your parents?”

“My mother and my ex didn’t get along,” Chris says, handing him the napkin before taking out the phone. “What, this a story you know?”

Peter lets out a derisive snort. “I think my sister would _adore_ it if I spawned. With her children that’s the closest she’s going to get to—”

Someone else’s phone is going off. Peter’s. He pulls it out, his expression already set to be disappointed, and when he sees whoever is calling, the expression firms up. He shoves his phone back in his pocket but starts cleaning himself up in more of a hurry.

Chris’ aunt’s email just says that they ran into a recent mess of Kate’s, and that his mother’s not happy about it. Well, who the hell in their family _is_ , he wonders, something bitter and old and not nearly scabbed over aching inside of him.

There are also a couple emails from people on their teams, probably with details, but…at this point Chris knows how bad that’s going to be, and knows he’s not going to want to read them with just beer in his system. He feels irrationally like he’s letting somebody down, but he puts his phone away and finishes pulling up his jeans.

“I don’t actually just hit and run, but I need to go retrieve one of my idiot blood relations,” Peter mutters. He flicks his handful of crumpled napkins into a trashcan in the corner, then glances up at Chris. His hair’s fluffed into the way and he combs it back with a couple fingers. “Do you do phone numbers?”

“You seem like somebody who could manage without that,” Chris says.

Peter glows a little, even as he says back, “Well, but I _try_ to ask first. This isn’t a commitment, it’s—”

“It’s a commitment to come fuck back here again?” Chris says.

This was, he thinks, not the way you normally figure out if someone’s a werewolf. He’s letting his family get to him—which is why he’s on this damn trip anyway, instead of dealing with Kate like he sh—Chris shakes his head.

“Are you running from something?” Peter asks, and then makes as if he regrets it. “It’s just your—”

“Face? Seen it on the news lately?” Chris says. Jokes. Tries to. Doesn’t really work, he can see how he’s getting Peter’s shoulders up, the man sensing something wrong in the air, and he needs to bring those down and not make this worse. “This is supposed to be a getaway trip. It's been stressful lately.”

“Ah,” Peter says. His eyes linger, as if he might add more, but then he snaps the flirting back in place and moves away, making up his own mind about something. “Well, then. Perhaps we’ll just see each other here.”

Chris is fine to leave it at that. He stays longer, pretending it’s about rearranging things, but after Peter leaves the closet, he goes to the trashcan and digs up the napkins Peter threw away. He bags them with the used condom and his napkins, casts a cantrip to get rid of any other traces, and then makes sure the door’s a little ajar when he walks out. He’ll get rid of them properly once he’s back at his Airbnb.

Peter’s just at the end of the hall, still visible but moving. Chris resists the urge to chase after him, especially with how the bar seems to be filling up, and instead drags the local layout from his memory. Then he goes out the backdoor.

Like he thought, that’s where Peter parked. He stays out of sight, waiting to see which way Peter turns out of the log, and then jogs through an alley between the two bars to the front where his car is. He’s a little slow because the alley is full of kids from the college bar—one kid trips in front of him, though Chris thinks that’s more because of his ill-fitting, baggy pants than anything Chris did. But he still makes it to his car in time to ease after Peter.

The town is too small and traffic is too light for Chris to tail Peter the entire way, so he makes a couple more educated guesses, and is proven right when he ends up across the street from the police station. Peter gets out of his car, annoyance written in every movement he makes, and storms into the station.

He's in there longer than Chris expected. Nearly an hour, and by then people are starting to head home from the bars. A group of not-exactly-college-age kids are unsteadily making their way down the sidewalk in front of the police station when Peter finally comes out, accompanied by the man Chris had seen driving the car out of the high school parking lot.

They’re arguing. Chris can’t make out what they’re saying, even though they’re loud enough that the gaggle of kids has stopped to watch. Peter’s doing most of it, snapping something out every time he turns, while the man answers once or twice before he just hunches his shoulders and appears to try to pretend he’s deaf. He doesn’t look at Peter, even when Peter reaches over and roughly pulls him towards the car.

Right then, the man looks up and through the group of kids at Chris, and his expression changes. His eyes widen and he looks…

Peter shoves him into the car. He goes, and then they drive off, and Chris is left thinking about that. The fear on the man’s face.


	2. Chapter 2

Derek Hale, Peter’s nephew. Chris hadn’t recognized him at the high school right away because photos of Derek from about his early teens onward aren’t online, although it’s easy enough to find a record showing he graduated from the school, did a few classes at the local college and then dropped out. It could just be that he doesn’t have friends who’ll plaster photos of them all over Instagram, but this feels more deliberate to Chris.

He has a juvenile record and Chris has already looked at it, and nothing had screamed out at him. Underage drinking, some vandalism charges that had sounded like pranks gone wrong, one semester suspended from school after he and his girlfriend had played hooky. That last one, Chris rethinks, and starts digging into the next morning.

It wasn’t just hooky, he finds out after faking his way into the school as a private investigator in a local divorce case. The girl had had some kind of medical emergency and ended up being rushed by ambulance from Derek’s family’s house, the same one they use for the haunted tour, so Chris heads over to the hospital.

The hospital proves to be a lot harder. He’s made almost immediately, and finds himself in an office with a woman in a nurse’s uniform, nametag ‘Melissa McCall.’ “Your name’s not Chris Atherton, and you don’t have any right to see the records you were asking for,” Melissa says. “You want to give me a good reason why we shouldn’t call in security right now and get you taken to the police station?”

“Look, I’m sorry, I think there was a misunderstanding,” Chris says, holding his palms where she can see them. “I’m just trying to help out somebody.”

“Oh, really,” Melissa says.

She’s skeptical but she’s standing there like she wants to know more, not having him dragged out the door. That alone tells him something. “I’m working for a family,” Chris goes on, watching her. “Something happened to their kid.”

Melissa’s good enough to just harden her expression, but again, that tells him something.

“I want to…” Chris slowly moves his hand towards his pocket “…show you a photo.”

She gives him a long look, and then a tight nod. He pulls his phone out and pulls up a picture of the third werewolf to turn up dead, the one who’d been dating Cora Hale. She recognizes it; she barely glances at it before her eyes are shooting up to him. Then she looks at it again, chewing her lip.

“I don’t think you know what you’re doing,” Melissa finally says. She puts two fingers against the end of the phone and pushes it away. “If you’re looking up a runaway or something like that, you should just go down to the police station and ask. That’s still not a reason to try to be breaking into someone’s medical records.”

“Well, the family doesn’t think it’s a runaway situation,” Chris says.

“If you think he ended up in the morgue, you should still be talking to the police,” Melissa shoots back. She steps away from him and puts both her hands on the back of a chair, pushing it between them. She suddenly winces, then sucks part of her lip into her mouth; she’s bitten herself hard enough to draw blood. Her hand goes up to wipe at her chin, even though it didn’t drip that far down. “I knew about that boy. He was dating a girl from one of the richest families in town.”

Chris doesn’t acknowledge it, just lets her talk. She’s looking for a reaction in him, a reason to cut him off and send him packing.

“I don’t think you want to look into them,” she adds after a moment, glancing over at the door. She tenses again and her eyes flick to him. “I’m sorry for them—this family you’re working for. But I don’t think you want to look here for anything to take back to them. It’s just not a good—”

The door clatters open. That, Chris had been expecting, but he’s surprised by who he finds when he turns around: two teenage boys, and neither of them belonging to the Hale family. 

One of them looks a little familiar—he’d been in the car with Derek, Chris remembers. “Mom, hey,” he says, smiling awkwardly, his eyes darting between Melissa and Chris. “I just was wondering…”

“I’m coming, I’m just wrapping up here,” Melissa says, just before she sucks in her breath.

The other boy grins sheepishly and drops his hands back from where he’d almost taken a binder off a shelf. His face also nags at Chris’ mind, but less specifically than Melissa’s son; Chris must have seen him around, maybe earlier at the school, but not near one of the Hales. “Sorry, I know, but you can’t throw ‘pathological oddities’ into a title and _not_ expect me to be interested.”

“We can just wait outside till you’re done,” Melissa’s son says, with a glance between his mother and his friend. It’s almost as if he thinks one of them needs to grant permission.

“No need, we’re on our way out,” Melissa says, with a look at Chris that dares him to make a scene. 

There’s nothing to gain if he does, so he lets himself be ushered out and walked several yards to the nearest door. Scott is the name of Melissa’s son, and he’s picking her up to go home; she’s limping a little, Chris notes. Stiles is the name of the other boy and he’s coming along till his mother gets off work. These are all things that Chris learns from Stiles’ nonstop chatter, which doesn’t make Scott or Melissa comfortable.

Chris lets it go, for now. It’s nearly lunchtime, so he turns out of the hospital towards the center of town.

* * *

_You could’ve just emailed for it,_ is what Chris’ mother sends back when he requests medical records on Derek’s old girlfriend. _Be careful. We can’t lose more._

He knows why she’s saying it, but it still sticks in his craw. He’s old enough—he grimaces, and stops that thought in its tracks. She’s always going to be the matriarch of the family, however old he gets, and she’s seen things go south more than he had. She _handled_ his father, after all.

Chris eats lunch, and then goes for a walk in the preserve, with his bow and arrow. He needs some time and he needs to hold up his cover. At some point he probably will have to shoot a deer, and he should at least figure out where to find them.

When he gets back to his Airbnb, his host has stuck an envelope under the door. It holds a VIP pass to the haunted house, along with a note that his host is just playing the messenger for Peter. 

There’s a phone number written on the back of the pass, along with a short note: _Usually I provide a drink first. Happy to make it up._

Chris stands there for a few seconds, idly flipping the ticket in his hand. He’s sure Peter isn’t a werewolf. If Derek is one…since sophomore year in high school would be a long time for a lone werewolf, and the question then is what happened to the rest of the pack. 

Then again, it’s not unheard of for a werewolf to pull together a pack of non-werewolves around them. Unusual, but it can be done, and if Derek’s family is as protective and well-resourced as they seem…but when would he have been bitten? And by who? How would Chris’ family not have heard of an alpha rampaging down here?

Chris starts to write another email with more information requests, and then he stops because he knows why they could have missed it, in that timeframe. 

He’s breathing hard, and he’s been sitting for the last few minutes. He makes himself calm down, push out the distractions, and think about it. Then he pulls over his laptop and settles in for another few hours of research.

* * *

Even stretching to encompass any non-natural causes death or crime or injury report he can find, Chris can’t see enough of a pattern. If a werewolf has been living in Beacon Hills ever since Derek’s girlfriend’s incident, he should see more in between now and then. A werewolf with the best control possible will still inevitably come to the attention of others of their kind, or of other supernatural beings, and when that happens, peace rarely results. 

But Beacon Hills is peaceful, as far as Chris can tell. He doesn’t really start to find anything until he expands to the neighboring towns, and those reports seem far too old. 

The one that gives him the most pause is a four-year-old write-up of an off-campus party gone horribly wrong, with cops from three towns including Beacon Hills called in to break it up. Some kind of hazing ritual, which from the sound of it involved untrained drunk people getting hold of a real magic object or magic spell, and had ended in seven people hospitalized, including one Beacon Hills deputy.

Chris leans back in his chair and looks at his computer screen. He drums his fingers against the table, then gets out of his seat. Thinks again, and finally makes up his mind.

* * *

The haunted house is set deep within the preserve. To get to it, you have to park outside at a temporary lot adjoining the small permanent one for hikers and hunters, and then you have to walk nearly a mile before you reach the ticket booth.

It’s still early enough so that the sun hasn’t set yet, but the tree cover makes it dark enough that Chris appreciates the small footlights lining either side of the trail. A couple groups are ahead of him, mostly parents with preteens or younger, and he spots a couple of them using their phones to light the way, too.

“Just you?” says the bored-looking boy at the booth to Chris.

He has the VIP pass in his pocket, but instead of pulling that out, Chris takes out his wallet. “Yeah, one adult.”

“Okay, which slot did you want?” the boy asks. “Eighteen-plus tours start at nine and we don’t really have anywhere to wait here. If you’re walking around the rest of the preserve, you’re welcome to do that, but the tour isn’t going to wait for you.”

There’s a schedule taped to the front of the booth. Chris glances at it. “When’s peak?”

“Nine,” the boy says. He’s checking something on his phone, and then he looks up at Chris, a grudging curiosity in his face. “This your first time? Do you want the rundown on how it works?”

“Yeah, someone mentioned to this to me, I didn’t check out the website,” Chris says, to see what he gets. The boy’s not part of the Hale family, and he fully expects that the Hales would hire seasonal temps, but…he’s curious himself, after that run-in at the hospital, what kind of reputation they have in town. “So before nine, they run a different tour?”

“It’s just watered-down, not really that different,” the boy says, and then he stops himself. “Well, and after nine you get to go into the basement. The little kids think that’s too scary and I heard a couple years ago that one got scared into having a fit and had to go to the hospital, so I think they stopped for liability reasons.”

Chris nods agreeably. “Makes sense, and guess you can keep more customers that way. They been doing the same scares every year, or do they change it up?”

The boy shrugs. “I think they do, but this is my first year so I’ve only heard about it from other people.”

“You go through it yourself?” Chris asks.

“Uh, yeah, but—” the boy pauses “—you know, we’ve got a website, there’s a photo gallery.”

He leans over the booth and reaches down to tap one of the glossy ads taped to the front, which has a QR code on it. Suppressing a sigh, Chris steps back and then takes his phone out to look like this is useful to him.

This at least seems to quash whatever suspicions the boy had been feeling, because he goes back to checking his phone. Then he half-turns as someone else walks up to the booth: Derek Hale.

Derek barely glances at Chris before letting himself into the back of the booth. He has a curt exchange with the boy, who seems wary but also familiar with this, before the boy pokes some buttons on the tablet he has and apparently sends something to Derek, who checks it on his phone. The boy watches him, then visibly relaxes as Derek backs out of the booth and turns to walk back up to the house. One of the adults in the small group waiting on the front porch hails Derek, who seems to need to think about it before he politely answers back. Being polite seems to require an additional effort on top of that.

“Sorry about that,” the boy says, flushing. “That’s one of the guys who owns this. They do some of the tours themselves.”

“And he’s the one they have doing the before-nine ones?” Chris asks, letting his skepticism bleed through.

The boy glances over his shoulder, even though Derek’s out of—human—hearing distance, but meets Chris with a knowing look. “Usually no, but I think Derek pissed off somebody.”

“Can I still get in for this tour?” Chris asks. “The one that’s about to go?”

The boy blinks. “Well…yeah, sure, if that’s what you want.”

Chris pulls out his credit card. “Yeah.”

* * *

From the booth, the house looks large and menacing, but it’s hard for it not to, with its setting amid tall, looming trees. 

Chris expects that to lessen when he gets closer, but standing on its porch, he’s surprised to find that it doesn’t. There’s nothing unusual, it’s a solid house with vaguely Victorian touches, and to be honest, he’s a little surprised that they haven’t tarted it up with fake blood or ‘Satanic’ symbols or any of the usual decorations. It just looks like the front porch of a house.

But he gets that feeling, the prickle between his shoulderblades and all along the back of his neck, that something is off. And it’s not only him: he can see it in how the group all huddles together, how the parents speak just a little more loudly than they need to when reassuring their children.

“Okay, some ground rules before we go in,” says Derek. He’s standing well away from them all, body language clearly uninterested in closing the gap. “Stay together. We do a count when we go in and when we go out. Stay on the path and don’t touch anything.”

“Are we going to fall through the trapdoor?” one little girl half-shouts.

Her father, embarrassed, tucks her against his legs and explains to her that he doesn’t think there are any trapdoors. Derek just stares irritably at them until the father has finished. “There aren’t any early exits. If anyone starts screaming or gets too freaked out, I’m just going to turn on all the lights and all the—all the scary stuff goes away. That means the whole group. We don’t split up, and if that means you don’t see the whole house, you don’t get a refund.”

“But what if someone’s a scaredy-cat,” pouts another, slightly less little, girl.

“You don’t get a refund,” Derek repeats flatly. “Everybody get that?”

Chorus of nods and ‘yeses’ and ‘okays.’ A couple of the parents look like they might be rethinking this, glancing towards the front path, but Chris overhears a whisper about ‘always let him have that attitude’ and then they settle in. 

Derek probably heard it too, from the way his expression goes even flatter. He pulls a ring of keys from his pocket, big and old-fashioned and the first campy thing Chris has seen about the place, and then sticks one into the front door lock before he launches into the house’s story.

It's unoriginal. The house dates back to the first white settlers in the area, which Chris could believe of the foundation. So does the first in-house death, which came as part of some kind of local Hatfield-and-McCoy business, and that Chris has a harder time swallowing. Not that there could’ve been a private feud, but that people back then bothered to set each other up for elaborate betrayals at family dinners when it was a lot easier to just shoot someone in the back and blame the Native Americans.

The Hales appear in the story around the turn of the century, apparently as part of some local Prohibition goings-on. For a moment, talking about beating up local politicians and strong-arming the house out of them, Derek seems like he might actually be interested in what he’s saying. But then one of the parents asks a question about smuggling tunnels and Derek gets annoyed, going out of his way to debunk the usefulness of a tunnel in the middle of a dense forest. He quickly moves on to the modern day, going through a laundry list of paranormal experiences he and his family had when they lived in the house, and then wraps with a perfunctory line about wanting to help prove it by letting other people have the same experience.

It's…historical. More of a ghost tour than a haunted house, Chris thinks, and wonders about all the rave reviews.

But then Derek unlocks the door and pushes it in, and—Chris blinks hard. He knows all about tricks of light and pareidolia, and how you don’t need the supernatural when a person’s own fear can conjure up enough to frighten you to death, but…something had stepped back into the darkness, right as the little light that’s still coming through the trees had flooded in.

And that sense of wrongness that’s eating at him, it comes back tenfold as he and the others stare at the rectangle of empty space. Even Derek seems to hesitate.

No, Derek’s phone is buzzing. His jeans pocket muffles the noise but when he pulls it out, it’s clear enough to make several of the group start, and then laugh uneasily. He looks at it, lips pressed together, and then abruptly launches himself through the doorway with a brusque, “Follow me.”

A couple of the parents shuffle through, and then the rest of the group falls in behind them. Chris is the only adult who’s unaccompanied, so he settles on a place between midway and the very back, and slightly off to the side, so that he doesn’t look as if he’s tailing any of the children. One little girl bumps into him anyway, and when her mother mutters an apology, he manages a casual, short back-and-forth that establishes he’s checking this out for an unspecified young relative as a favor to their parents.

They’re cut off when Derek, having shooed them all into the front room to the left of the entrance, shuts the door. “This used to be the fanciest parlor. They held all the funerals in here,” he says.

And then he stops, and just lets them look around. It’s dark, with just some light coming in from a large flashlight in Derek’s hand, but the room looks normal—the heavy Victorian-style wood paneling clashes with the more modern furnishing, but there aren’t any coffins or fake cobwebs, or even taxidermied animals. They don’t really seem to be trying and Chris can’t see where this place gets his reputation.

But just as he thinks that, one of the men jumps, jostling into another man. “Sorry,” he says, smiling stiffly and then turning the other way. “I just…”

Then he falters, and stares at empty space. He doesn’t raise his hands but Chris catches when he glances down at his own arm, and guesses the jump wasn’t out of nothing.

“Mommy, do you hear that?” says a little boy.

“Okay, let’s go,” Derek says, startling the mother into a half-annoyed look as she gives up on answering her child.

Derek crosses the room to the next wall and opens the door there; unusually, the house seems to still have something close to the original layout, rather than having all the non-load-bearing walls knocked down for an open floor plan. The next room over is smaller and darker, and made even more so by the floor-to-ceiling curio cabinets that march down parallel walls. When Derek flips on the sole light in the room, a central chandelier, the low yellow burn doesn’t seem to appreciably diminish the shadows.

He talks a little more in this room, reminding them of one of the Old West stories he’d told outside, but most of the kids are distracted with peering into the cabinets. None of them hold anything, but they have glass fronts with small panes and mirrors lining the inside backs, so the reflections of the doors’ cross-bars make it look at first as if they are—

A boy shouts, and then tumbles into another kid as well as an adult. He’s chattering so fast that it’s hard to make out anything, but he keeps trying to avoid the cabinets on one side so the group starts to gravitate towards them. Then another child, a girl, screams, and grabs at her mother’s hand. “I saw him!” she says hysterically. “He was looking at me! In there, he’s in there!”

Her mother leans down and hugs her, assuring her that nothing is real. It’s the same girl who’d been asking about scaredy-cats, although to her credit, when asked if she wants to just go, the girl recovers a little to shake her head.

“But can we leave _this_ room?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Derek says, and as stone-faced as he is, he’s not slow to open the door to the next room.

The group gets stretched out as they try to file through the doorway. People want to leave, but they also keep twisting around. Some are trying to see if anything’s in the cabinets, some are trying to see who’s behind them, and some are doing both at once. The apologies muttered when people bump each other now aren’t as friendly.

Chris drops a little closer to last this time, so he gets a good look at the seam between the very last cabinet and the wall just as Derek flicks off the chandelier: there’s a hair-thin but visible line of light. You can do things with mirrors and lights, they figured that out back in the pre-electricity days. Get the right mood and Pepper’s Ghost is as scary as any expensive prosthetic. 

He's starting to get the theme here, and in the next room, dressed up as a kid’s playroom with plenty of toys and other loose objects, he doesn’t even bother to look for the hidden vents that start blowing stuff around. The kids are whipped up close to hysterics and one father nearly gets to the next door before Derek, so anxious is he to calm his two down. Derek slides in the way, saying something about not opening a door too soon, and the father rears back as if he’s seriously considering punching Derek in the face.

Before he can, Derek swings open the door. 

A palpably cold hit of air stabs through the group, so well-defined that Chris can track its passage by the shivers. The ones closest to the door hesitate, but then banging noises all over the walls and the ceiling of the current room start up. Clinging to each other and screaming—a couple of the adults included in that—they flee into the next room.

They’re at the other end of the house now, in the kitchen. It’s a huge room that seems to stretch across the entire back end, with a row of windows that lets everyone see the outside. Someone’s carved a line of pumpkins and put them facing the house so that their toothy grins provide most of the light. They’re so corny that people’s minds seize on them as real and familiar and comforting, and a wave of relief passes through the group, especially once Derek shuts the door on the last room.

The banging and the moving toys stopped as soon as they were all out, Chris notes as he settles in for the last act.

“So this is the old kitchen,” Derek says. His hair’s been messed around some and one side of his coat-collar is askew, but otherwise he looks as irritated as when they started. “The big table there is original to the house.”

They all look at the table. It’s a massive, crude thing, as if someone had just hacked off the bark and then nailed together what they had. The layers of stains make it impossible to tell what kind of finish it’d started out life with, or if it’d even had a finish, instead of just soaking up dirt and juices over time till it got its own patina.

“So when I was telling you about how they had to wash up bodies and hold them somewhere till the coroner could look at them, it was here,” Derek goes on. He walks over to the equally big double sink in the corner, near the outside door, and their eyes follow him. He explains about old-fashioned pre-funeral rituals, back before the undertaker handled everything for you, and then turns back around. His little spiel cuts off.

Naturally people’s eyes follow where he’d been going, even though his expression doesn’t change. There’s a body lying on the table now, under a white sheet.

“Daddy!” screams a little boy, ramming himself into his father’s knees.

The man just catches himself from cursing and grabs at his boy, trying not to fall over, while a white-faced girl, sobbing a little, asks, “Is it dead?”

The body sits up.

It doesn’t even take off the sheet, but half the group is at the outside door, and Derek doesn’t try to block them. The door’s not locked either, Chris notes.

A low, inhuman groan echoes through the room. It doesn’t sound as if it’s even coming from the thing on the table—because it isn’t. Hidden speakers, Chris thinks, side-stepping as the other half of the group start to bundle themselves after the first. It’s almost not even necessary when the sheet starts to come off, with all the adults too busy trying to comfort their children or keep from stepping on someone else’s. He wonders if the sheet ever has to get low enough to show the face.

But he doesn’t want to stand out more than he is already, with not running out the door, so he turns and walks out. Derek’s onto him, and follows, frowning. He’s not as distant now and Chris actually thinks he might be about to come up and say something when there’s a loud ruckus at the far end of the porch.

“Okay, you didn’t die! That was cool, now who wants their complimentary hot apple cider?” says an inappropriately loud, cheerful teenage boy carrying a large tray with a string of pumpkin lights strung around its edge. The boy from the hospital, Stiles.

He finishes it off by putting his foot down with a sharp thud against the porch floor. Whatever kids aren’t already crying, start.

“ _Shit_ ,” Derek mutters.

He’s still a little behind Chris, who’d turned to see what was going on. He doesn’t immediately move, so when Chris turns back, he just gets to see Derek’s expression before the other man passes him and it’s…not annoyed. Derek looks like he’s making himself march forward.

“Sorry, sorry,” Stiles is saying, with an awkward goofiness that seems to be winning over the parents. Nearly all of them take a cup, and by the time he makes it around the group, some of the kids are starting to smile at him. “Well, hey, Derek, Scott and I thought you were off today.”

“I’m not,” Derek mutters, with a glance at the group as if he wishes he could push them off the push. “ _You’re_ supposed to be off today. And Isaac’s on. I told you—I sent a text.”

Stiles blinks, clearly surprised at Derek’s reaction, and then slumps. His tray’s got one cup left and he almost flips it into his chest, trying to use the tray as a defense, before catching himself. “Okay, I think we dropped a text or something somewhere. I thought—”

“Yeah, you always _think_ , Stiles,” Derek snaps. Then, scowling, he uses a visible effort to pull himself back.

Derek turns around and flatly thanks everyone for coming, then points out the path that will lead them back to the ticket booth. Apparently there are also Porta Potties installed nearby, if anyone needs to freshen up first. He also reminds them to use the trashcan at the end of the porch and to not litter in the preserve, which earns him several puzzled looks from the parents. Then he shuts up and glares till they all start to file down off the porch.

Chris can’t come up with an excuse to stay, but he pauses to collect that last cup of cider from Stiles’ tray. “Thanks.”

“Sure, come back with friends! It gets even more gruesome after nine!” Stiles says, with the distanced happiness of a server on autopilot. He’s clearly preoccupied with whatever conversation he and Derek are going to have after this. But then he stops and looks sharply at Chris. “Oh. Hey. You.”

“Stiles,” Derek says.

Orders, really, with how Stiles sucks his breath and takes a step away from Chris before even turning to face Derek. He pauses, looking at Chris, and then reluctantly twists around to follow Derek back into the house.

* * *

Something about the house bothers Chris, long after he’s thrown his paper cup away and walked out of the preserve to his car. It’s not Derek, or the way he’d acted with Stiles—Chris hadn’t liked that either, but he knows where that’s going to end and that lets him hold back his temper. And it’s not that sense of foreboding that had swept over him when he’d been standing at the front door, since that’s just going to the same thing: Derek Hale. 

But Derek is one person. Take him away from his stronghold and get him on his own and…and the house still bothers Chris. In his memory it stands apart, shrouded in shadows, so aloof that it doesn’t seem to care whether he wonders at what’s going on inside, whether he comes up to the windows, or the door. If he steps inside, and when he does, what…

Chris sits in his car for a few minutes, catching up on his emails. Some of his family’s researchers have turned up results about Derek’s old girlfriend, showing that she’d been taken to the hospital for some sort of seizure. She’d recovered but had moved out of town shortly after that. Not much to show what had caused the fit, but she and Derek had been near the house in the woods when it’d happened. On the other hand, Derek had called an ambulance for her—twice, because the ambulance had a hard time making it up the twisting driveway. That seems like a little too much thought for a fifteen-year-old werewolf who could run that mile and meet the ambulance down at the preserve entrance. 

More details about Derek’s juvenile record are also included. It’s mostly uninteresting, nothing to say ‘werewolf,’ but as Chris is scrolling through, something catches his eye. He goes back to it, then checks the address listed for Derek in Google and finds that it’s for a location well inside of town. So the Hales had moved out of their old house pretty early, at least for this generation.

Chris goes back into the records to see if maybe he can tell when, only to come across a recent one for vandalism. It’s no more than a month old—the attachments are out of order—and apparently, Derek had been found in the preserve next to a half-toppled tree of some local fame. What’s interesting about it is the spiral scratches that Chris can just make out on the tree trunk.

But—Chris drags the file down, and then presses his lips together. Derek’s mug shot is included and it’s normal. Facing straight on, eyes glowering at the camera, everything visible.

So he’s not a werewolf. Or…or he’s strong enough to suppress what he is. Which means he’s an alpha.

They’d all figured on the cause being an omega driven to it by the strain of being without a pack. The pattern pointed that way, with mostly young, inexperienced betas being lured away from their packs, and with the deaths not seeming to come from direct confrontation. And Chris has been in town for enough time to have picked up evidence of an actual pack, but he hasn’t picked up anything.

What he has picked up is a small group of people, apparently connected to the Hales, who are intimidated by something—someone. You hear about this sometimes, an alpha who can’t stand to be around other werewolves. It’s not really right to consider them omegas, since they’re not doing it because of lack of power, but because they’re trying to keep it all to themselves. And unlike omegas, who go insane because there’s nowhere else for them to go, a lone alpha chooses to be that way.

Chris starts to write up an email to his mother, but then thinks twice about it and puts his phone away. It doesn’t totally hang together for him. He’s almost positive that Derek is at the heart of all of this, but the man just…doesn’t strike him as fitting there. It’s like with the house, you take Derek away and something is still wrong.

He decides to drive back to his Airbnb and think about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So in case you haven't noticed, this is going to be one of those stories where you don't get a third-person omniscient narrator pulling all the clues together for you, and it's going to be long.


	3. Chapter 3

Day three of his stay, he keeps indoors. It’s drizzling on and off, not that he minds that sort of weather, but between the run-in at the hospital and Stiles making him later, he suspects he needs to let things cool off. And if they’re not going to, he might as well let them come to him.

Anyway, more research is coming in. In the end, he sent in more requests for information on the Hales, including on when they’d lived in the house in the woods, and replies come back steadily through the day. They’re not exactly hiding their lives, Chris thinks.

Most of what Derek said about the house turns out to be true, if exaggerated and rearranged. Possibly the house _is_ haunted, or cursed, and that’s what had been eating at Chris. He wonders if maybe the Hales have picked up a little working knowledge of magic at some point, just enough to turn the atmosphere in the house in their favor. But he doesn’t remember seeing any charms or bundles of dried herbs or other tell-tale signs, unless you want to count the jack o’ lanterns on the back porch, and you’d want them all around the house in that case.

What isn’t true, as it turns out, is Derek’s claim to have experienced much of it himself. He was four when his parents separated and his mother had relocated the family to a townhouse they’d been renting out. The divorce filings paint an ugly picture of the days leading up to it, and when Chris compares the photos documenting the house’s interior damage to what he'd seen, he has to admit to being impressed at the restoration.

It doesn’t appear that the Hales ever returned to live it. There’s an exchange from years later that he reads, lawyer-written letters between Derek’s mother, Talia, and the local authorities about the dilapidated condition of the place and how it was attracting vagrants and legend-trippers. That’s in August of that year, and that October the haunted house had opened for the first time. Chris gathers from a couple social-media write-ups of the place that initially it’d been a lot more reliant on standard scares. He finds a picture of a younger Peter, standing on the front porch in what appears to be a take on an old-fashioned undertaker’s suit, with an empty coffin next to him.

His phone rings. Chris recognizes the number and picks it up without really thinking about it. “Yeah?”

_“You look at your email lately?”_ his aunt asks.

He feels the muscles across the back of his shoulders tighten. “Been reading through research. What happened? Do I need to—”

His aunt sighs. _“If you needed to come up, I wouldn’t be talking about your email, Chris.”_

“You said you’d call if you needed me,” Chris says, and immediately regrets it. He sounds needy.

There’s a pause. Short, but long enough to tell him his aunt thinks the same. _“Look, I’m just calling for prep. Your mother’s going to be beside herself, and the last thing she needs is any more on her plate.”_

“I wasn’t planning on adding anything,” Chris says. He sounds irritable, but this he doesn’t regret.

_“Yeah, you don’t do that. And you don’t really need to be told either, but…”_ his aunt is uncharacteristically tired-sounding _“…it’s just been a hell of a day. Kate’s a werewolf.”_

Chris is silent. 

_“Can’t say it’s much of a surprise, once you have to look it in the face, but…but what’s going to get your mother is what Kate’s been saying to drum up support. She’s been going around telling people she had to leave because we were going to make her kill herself, as if Angela didn’t wipe that out of the Code before that little bitch was even b—Chris,”_ his aunt says.

“Yeah,” Chris finally says. He closes his laptop and stays leaned forward, hand on it, before deciding not to get up. “Yeah, she’s going to be…I’m sorry, Bridget.”

His aunt sighs again. _“When I’m done here, Kate’s going to be the only sorry one. But look, how are things? You’re sending a lot of requests in.”_

“I’m just trying to figure out how things run down here,” Chris says, and then he leans back in his chair, trying to loosen up. Even half-distracted, his aunt will pick up on his tone if he’s not careful. “Figured it wouldn’t be noticed as much as me asking a bunch of questions.”

_“Oh, you’re old enough to know how to do this, don’t mouth back at me like you’re on your first run,”_ his aunt says, but it’s warm enough that she’s taking it for the light joke he’s aiming it to be. Someone speaks to her in the background and she answers, and when she comes back to him, she’s sober again. _“I know this is a lot to ask, but try not to engage with her when she calls you. She needs to be…she needs to be the leader of this family. Kate can’t take that away from us, too.”_

“No, she can’t,” Chris agrees. He thinks it comes off sufficiently determined.

His aunt thanks him, then hangs up. She’s always been like that, brisk and focused on what’s best for them, not on what she feels. Chris has mixed feelings about that, but he can’t deny that he’s modeled a lot of himself on Bridget Argent. 

Kate had hated her. And Chris has never been sure why, considering Bridget had doted on Kate, all the way up to the day they’d gotten the first inkling that Kate was not going to adhere to the Code. Sure, after that, Bridget had had no mercy, and sometimes Chris thinks, if she had, if she’d given Kate a little slack to come around with instead of making it about knuckling under…

But no, Chris thinks as he pushes himself away from the couch. Kate had always hated her. Had made fun of her behind her back, even as Bridget had lavished attention on her, given her extra time and resources. Chris’ mother had wanted them equally trained, even if Kate was the heir, but Bridget had…well, she hadn’t skimped with Chris. She’d just given Kate more. And Kate had taken it, all right, but hadn’t given any credit back.

And now Bridget’s hunting Kate down.

“Hell,” Chris exhales, but he doesn’t really feel it. 

He wonders if he should. He…he hunts things, people, who don’t feel anything when bad things happen to their close family members, who don’t feel anything about _doing_ bad things to close family members, and he calls them monsters and sleeps just fine. But all he can really think is that this is overdue, and it feels _right_ to think that.

What feels wrong is him. It feels like he should be up with his family, hunting down his own blood. He sucks his breath between his teeth, and for a second, the house is too small and he wants to break the walls to make it big enough.

Instead he goes to get his coat.

* * *

His mother’s going to call him, and when she does, he needs to take that call. Chris takes his phone with him, but he doesn’t walk around the preserve where it’s quiet and calm and if he needs to step to the side, he can.

No, he drives into town and leaves his car in a near-deserted public lot in the center of the business district, and then walks over to the bars.

It’s some kind of theme night somewhere, people in brightly-colored leotards clustering on the sidewalk in small groups. When Chris realizes the bunches are only getting thicker as he goes further, he has a moment where he wants to shout at them all.

He shakes it off, and keeps walking till he’s through the block and heading towards the municipal center. He’d had some half-formed idea of burning through some pool games and…and…maybe he should have stayed in the preserve. Gone hiking or something like that, something physical enough to burn off all the itching under his skin.

There’s a small convenience store on the corner. He thinks he’ll stand out if he doesn’t keep moving, so he turns into the store to buy some time while he figures out what to do with himself, and that’s when his phone buzzes.

_“Bridget told you,”_ his mother says, not asks.

Chris stares at the rack of snack bags in front of him. Half of them say ‘organic’ and he wonders when that became popular for junk food cheap enough to give you change back for a five. “Yeah. Look, she’d crossed the line even before—”

His mother snorts. It’s inelegant and direct, and it startles him. His mother has always been the deliberate, political, slightly aloof one, a leader rather than a parent—although he understood why as soon as he got old enough to understand what the word ‘bitch’ meant. _“I know all that, Chris. I’m the one telling them to shoot her on sight, that this one time the Code doesn’t matter.”_

“It’s not that—she’s already outside of it. No, I mean—you are following it,” Chris stammers, feeling oddly as if he’s a teenager again, and trying to reason through the test scenarios she and the team leads are throwing at him. “It says—”

_“I know what it says too,”_ his mother says sharply. Then she’s silent, and then a soft, sad noise just barely brushes through the phone. _“I’m sorry. I didn’t call you to yell at you. I want to yell at all of this, but it just won’t…I just wanted to see how you felt.”_

Chris glances around the store. He’s the only one besides the clerk, who’s watching something on a laptop or phone below the level of the counter. “It’s justified.”

_“…that’s it?”_ his mother asks, her voice odd.

“Well—” he just stops himself from snapping at her, remembering what his aunt had said “—I don’t know what else there is. She didn’t really leave anything else to talk about.”

His mother is silent. It’s long enough and strained enough that Chris thinks about turning around and walking out, just so that he can let her know he needs to hang up till he’s sure he’s clear again. He just thinks about it; he wouldn’t be that childish.

_“You used to check her arrows to make sure they were sharp. You remember that?”_ his mother says. Still in a strange tone, but a different kind of strange. It’s slow and almost warm. _“She liked that. She hated it when I did it, and even would backtalk Gerard when he did, but she didn’t mind you.”_

Something about it makes Chris’ blood want to boil out of his veins. He hasn’t thought about Kate like that in years, to be honest, and his mother, who has even less reason to think about her that way—for her to still sound like that. To still think it’s _okay_ to sound like that—his temper wants to lash out.

“She stopped resenting Gerard for that when he started slipping her poison to put on them,” is what he restrains himself to. Don’t engage, she needs to lead the family more than she needs him to spill all over her. “I lost my sister a long time ago, that’s all I have to say. So it’s…what needs to be done.”

_“I didn’t call you to argue, Ch—”_ his mother audibly stops herself _“—damn it. No. I didn’t. I just wanted to see…but if that’s where you are, I guess I don’t need to worry.”_

This is his mother, and Kate is her child. And if she didn’t feel that, even with all that Kate has done, and Gerard before that…she wouldn’t be fit to lead the family Chris still calls his. Some of his anger bleeds off. “I try not to be that one,” he says, with genuine feeling.

It must come through all right, because his mother lets out a dry chuckle that’s more like her. Then she takes a short breath, and he knows the point is coming. _“I think we have her run to ground. I think it’ll be in the next twenty-four hours. I don’t want any of the other families horning in, not till we’re sure, so—it’s blackout until then, and I included you in that. All right?”_

“I had some research asks,” Chris says unthinkingly.

_“They’ll still come back to you, if something turns up,”_ his mother says crisply, as if it isn’t a newbie thing to raise. _“But blackout other than that.”_

“Yeah. Yeah, right, got it,” Chris says.

His mother pauses. _“Thanks, Christopher.”_

She stopped calling him that when he was old enough to go with teams without her. He’s telling her good luck when he realizes she’s hung up.

Chris stares at his phone for a few seconds, then puts it away. Looks at the snack racks without really seeing them, and then just goes outside.

He’s going to walk back to his car, but his mind’s still on the call and he gets five or six feet before his baseline awareness tells him something’s wrong. He looks up, realizes he’s going in the wrong direction, and then turns around. Peter Hale’s there, in a suit with the ends of his unknotted tie flickering in the breeze against his chest, looking oddly at him.

“Well, this is an unexpected meeting,” Peter says. 

“Is it really?” Chris says back.

Peter’s brows rise. Too late, Chris sees the dry-cleaning bag tucked under his arm and realizes the man can’t possibly be stalking him. “I was going to ask that next,” he says. “Admittedly, not on my way home with my favorite suit on the line, but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Chris says.

“You were a little snappier with the comeback lines the other night,” Peter says. He comes a few steps closer, but keeps a street meter between them. “I think this is where we discuss whether we can do this civilly or if there needs to be a scene. I’d prefer the latter, although you may have heard differently.”

Chris considers crossing the street and walking away, but just then a police car slowly rounds the corner. He glances at it, then back at Peter, whose lips curve upwards in a way that says he’d been bluffing, and is delighted to know exactly how to corner Chris.

Then there’s no point in staying on defense. “You have a preference for a location?”

Peter stops smiling. His arm tightens ever-so-slightly on the dry-cleaning. “I live around the corner,” he finally says. “If it’d be better to keep nominally public, there’s a café downstairs.”

Chris nods, and then, when Peter doesn’t immediately move, gestures with his arm for Peter to show the way.

‘Around the corner’ means going back towards where Chris had come. Peter isn’t quite so naïve as to be comfortable with Chris at his back, but he also can’t quite bring himself to wait for Chris to catch up to him. They settle for about a yard apart, diagonal to each other, with Peter keeping his head awkwardly turned back to keep an eye on Chris. Not a werewolf, Chris thinks again.

Then they get to the café and Chris can’t help himself. “Bubble tea?”

“Do you have something against bubble tea?” Peter says, somehow keeping his face straight.

Chris opens his mouth, then shuts it. More against a sigh than a protest, but Peter seems to think this has given him back an edge and Chris doesn’t correct the man.

The place has a few people in it, but it’s barely more than a counter. Peter goes right in and the barely not-a-teenager behind the counter greets him by name. He orders a drink, then looks expectantly at Chris, who picks the least sugary-looking special and who declines all customization options. Then Peter pays for them both.

“Are we going back outside?” Chris says.

“No,” Peter says, with a nod towards the back of the café.

The café is in a larger residential building, and there’s a door to the lobby, which Chris had missed at first because it’s tucked behind a booth shaped like a giant mushroom. They round the red-and-white capped hood to the booth and come out in the lobby, which is generically Scandinavian minimalist.

“Are we going up to your place?” Chris asks, once they’re past the doorman and into the unoccupied back half.

“Is that where you think this night is headed?” Peter returns. He’s wrapping his flirting around something warier. “I suppose I did give that kind of a first impression, but that was before—”

“Your nephew said something?” Chris says. He studies the change in Peter’s expression. “Or your friends at the hospital?”

Peter’s mouth twitches in the opposite direction before he gives Chris a condescending smile. “I think they’d object to that description. Let’s say we have interests in common, such as understanding what _your_ particular interest in my family is.”

“I’m interested in helping my clients get some resolution about their child,” Chris says.

“Which is a very bold lie for someone who’s been in town for less than a week,” Peter says in a tone of practiced amiability. He takes the dry-cleaning out from under his arm and drapes it over the back of a nearby chair, and then inserts his straw into his bubble tea. “You’re a very poor private investigator if you didn’t realize we know the Madisons.”

Chris blinks hard, and then remembers: Madison’s the last name of the werewolf who’d taken Cora Hale to one school dance. In all of the digging he’d done since coming to town, he’d forgotten the original reason why the Hales had come up as a possible angle. And he hadn’t gotten far enough to actually pick out a file when Melissa McCall had rumbled him, just enough so that he’d had to throw out the P.I cover story to cover his interest in morgue files. She’d just gone off the photo he’d shown, and had told Peter. 

His obvious confusion makes Peter hesitate. “The Madisons,” Peter repeats, clearly thrown off his follow-up.

“That’s not who I’m looking for,” Chris says, thinking quickly. He takes the plastic off his own straw, to hide when he connects the dots. “I’m here looking into the death of Kyle Restrepo.”

Peter frowns. “I don’t know that name.”

“Well, he didn’t live here. He had friends who went to the high school here,” Chris says, punching the straw into the top of his drink. “Madison—yeah, that name came up when I was trying to look into them. They mostly talked online so I was trying to figure out if these people were even real, or just stealing other people’s identities.”

He sips at it, which is a mistake. It’s too sweet and too citrus at the same time, and he makes a face before he can help himself. He jerks the straw out of his mouth and wipes at his lips with the back of his hand, and then realizes Peter’s looking at him.

There’s a lingering trace of embarrassment on the man’s face, but live, close interest is rapidly crowding that way. “I see we’ve had some crossed wires,” he says.

“That’s all right, you bought me a drink,” Chris says, and Peter laughs.

The sound of it hangs in the air between them. Peter lifts his drink slightly, then shifts his posture instead, looking Chris over. “I think that only evens us out for the last time,” he says. “I still have _this_ debt to clear…and I’m interested now. And may be able to help you. My family’s been in this town for a long time, and we know anything that’s worth knowing.”

They probably think they do. And maybe they do, between all of them, but that knowledge isn’t equally shared. Because something else Chris knows now, Derek isn’t talking to his uncle. If he was, he wouldn’t have brought up his sister’s dead boyfriend as the problem.

But if that’s the case, Peter’s not likely to be able to put Chris on the track that he needs to be on. Derek is involved, but not with Peter’s generation of the family, or maybe not his family at all. And yet…

“Are we still doing this in public?” Chris finds himself asking. Thinking about going back to his Airbnb, and waiting for a couple emails, while the rest of _his_ family hunts each other to the death. And his mother, asking him what he _felt_. “Or…”

Peter smiles. “I don’t think we _have_ to, unless you’d be more comfortable that way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gerard's already dead in this universe.


	4. Chapter 4

They go up to Peter’s apartment. It’s not the penthouse level, to Chris’s surprise, but he’s not surprised when Peter feels the need to explain that the sound buffering is actually better at a slightly lower level.

Peter also feels the need to explain that his family has a checkered reputation in town, and that what had happened to Cora’s date had stirred up old gossip. “A single dance doesn’t mean they were committed to marriage, but with some of the nonsense on social you’d think Cora had betrayed her lifetime partner, or something equally ridiculous.”

“She’s what, seventeen, eighteen? Don’t you think everything’s for life at that age?” Chris says, dropping his bubble tea in the trash.

“You have children?” Peter says, amused. Then pauses, thoughtful, as Chris can’t quite hide his wince. “You mentioned an ex—”

“We tried. Didn’t happen,” Chris says curtly, and wonders why he’s saying even that much without half a barrel of whiskey in him.

To his credit, Peter leaves the subject. “I should finish this, since I bought it, but help yourself,” he says, gesturing to the liquor cart in the corner.

What the hell, Chris thinks. He’s on blackout, and if Derek is the werewolf, he doesn’t seem to attack his own family so Peter’s apartment is probably one of the safest places in town. He goes over and picks out a bottle. “Do you not actually drink those?”

“No, I do,” Peter says, and sucks pointedly at his straw. His cheeks hollow and it’s a standard play but it’s also undeniably pretty, with his jawline and cheekbones. Then he lifts off it, and settles his hip against the couch, watching Chris pour out a drink. “Kyle Restrepo. Who was he friends with?”

Five people claiming to be teenagers with a common interest in a single video game, Chris tells him. Of the five, Chris or his family’s research team have verified four, while the last one does appear to live in town but that’s as far as they’ve gotten. That one had been tech-savvy enough to use tricks to obscure their identity, and the better hackers in Chris’ family’s network are working on Kate. Anyway, werewolves aren’t typically reliant on technology to hide themselves, and more often are hard to track because they just go completely off-grid.

Not that Chris adds in that. He doesn’t need to give Peter more than the bare bones anyway; Peter starts speculating on his own as soon as he has the slightest reason to. They’ve run through the top five Internet theories before Chris even has a chance to ask, “What happened to your knowing everything in town?”

“I said we knew anything that’s worth knowing,” Peter corrects, his now-finished tea dangling from one hand. “Generally I wouldn’t consider the high school set in that category.”

“Well, you seemed concerned about it before,” Chris says.

His drink is almost done. He glances over at the cart and Peter smiles. Puts his empty plastic cup on the table and rises, and goes to retrieve the bottle. “I suppose I did, but then, when the local housewives are constantly assuming every unsolved murder leads to your family’s doorstep—”

“You have a lot of those around here?” Chris asks dryly.

Peter returns to the couch, but stays standing, facing Chris. “You’re the one specializing in that sort of thing,” he says. “You should know.”

“I’m starting to think I’m just satisfying your true-crime fetish,” Chris says. It was a good whiskey, but it’s not taking the edge off. If anything, he feels more nervy. “If you don’t have anything—”

“—then why would you be interested in my family?” Peter says, with his hand suddenly on Chris’ shoulder. “You haven’t said what this has to do with my nephew Derek.”

The bottle grazes gently against Chris’ knee as Peter steps into the space between them. Chris hadn’t really moved, maybe had just leaned towards the direction of the door, but there’s a thread of suppressed urgency in Peter’s voice. “I told you that I’m looking—”

“You said you were looking into that dead boy, and not the other one. You didn’t say you weren’t looking at us,” Peter says.

Chris meets his eyes. “I’m not.”

For a long, careful moment, Peter studies him. Then, with another smile to try and cover, Peter relaxes. His hand rests on Chris’ shoulder rather than grips it. “I don’t know what we’ve done, to be honest with you. We got rid of the one who always—Talia, my sister, she divorced a gutless thug and sent him packing out of town. Before that he caused far too many scenes…but since him, we pay our taxes, we sponsor holiday drives, we do all the proper things. We haven’t murdered anyone, so far as I can tell. But as a private eye, you’d know that.”

“You haven’t exactly been angels either. Well, the next generation,” Chris says, watching Peter’s eyes narrow. “I have been checking into the high school ‘set’ since that’s the age range, and it doesn’t take that long for your nephew’s records to pop up.”

Peter’s eyes clear, then go distant with irritation. “ _Oh_ , that’s why…yes, Derek’s…troubled.”

“He’s a little old, too. Shouldn’t he be in college?” Chris throws out.

It’s a good cast. Peter’s irritation deepens. “He _should_ , shouldn’t he. Well, I can imagine what you thought, but—”

“I thought he didn’t seem like the video game type,” Chris inserts.

Peter falters. He takes his hand off Chris and lifts his other arm, and for a moment Chris almost thinks he might sip straight from the bottle while he’s trying to sort out his thoughts. Then he stops and considers Chris.

“He’s not,” he says. Not curtly, just simply. He glances down at the bottle, then finally offers it to Chris. His brows rise a little when Chris instead puts his glass down on the coffeetable. “Derek has had some bad external influences, but we’ve been keeping him close to make sure he breaks the connections. That would predate Restrepo’s death, so unfortunately, I don’t think Derek would know anything.”

“Drug trouble?” Chris offers.

“Oh, if only. If it was that, we’d just call up a rehab center and send him off,” Peter snorts. He sets the bottle down on the table next to Chris’ tumbler. “No, it’s just a short temper and an unreasonable attitude towards grudges. He’s _physical_ about it, shall we say.”

“Well, that wouldn’t be unusual if he’s coming from a family who knows everything and everyone,” Chris says. “You see a lot of that, with that kind of background.”

“And I don’t necessarily disagree with making sure people know who you are, just the manner in which it’s done,” Peter says. He gives Chris a mild, expectant look. “Does that make me suspect?”

“I think you can’t make up your mind whether you’d like that or not,” Chris says after a moment. “You keep telling me why it’s not your family I should look into, even though I’ve told you I’m not.”

Peter shrugs. “And yet, you’re up here.”

“You think that’s the only reason why I’d be up?” Chris asks. Spur-of-the-moment, not really thinking it through, just reacting.

And yet the sharp look he gets from Peter for it is the most authentic expression he’s seen on the man to date. This is more sparring, Peter is thinking, but at the same time—he can’t help but look to see if there’s something else.

“I could just enjoy the thrill,” Peter says, leaning forward.

“Yeah. Yeah, true,” Chris says, before he reaches up with both hands and fists them in Peter’s shirt.

Peter inhales into the press of their mouths, as if he’s trying to steal the air first. His hands slide purposefully down Chris’ sides, wrapping around Chris’ hips, before dragging back up to pull and twist at Chris’ belt. They start backstepping somewhere; the whiskey sloshes when Peter knocks into the table. He moans his curse because Chris is palming him through the front of his trousers.

Most of their clothes are gone by the time they get to Peter’s bedroom. Peter drops to his knees before Chris can pull off his shirt, so as he sucks Chris off, Chris kneads and wrenches the crisp cotton into a mangled bundle across Peter’s shoulders. The man’s well-kept, skin smooth and hairless over gym-perfected muscles. He doesn’t have scars that Chris notices.

He picks up on the scars Chris has, tracing them with his fingers as Chris, pushing him onto the bed, levers up between his knees. “What _have_ you been doing,” he says in a gasping purr. “Is it really—that dangerous? Teenagers?”

“You’d be surprised,” Chris grunts.

Peter drops his hand between them, starts to tease Chris’ cock erect again as Chris works him open. He lolls into Chris’ fingers with the abandon of someone used to enjoying sex for what it is. “For someone who’s never had his own—”

Chris stares down at Peter, and Peter goes silent, pupils widening, expression caught between triumph and concern. He wasn’t really expecting that to hit home, didn’t know what he was going to get with it.

But he’s not trying to get away when Chris fucks him. Bareback this time, holding him down by one bicep and his chest. He still has that look on his face, surprised and wild, up to nearly the very end, when finally his head goes back and his mouth opens wide and he shakes off all that acting for something real.

* * *

It’s a good fuck. So was the first one. But this is not what Chris should be doing.

Peter rolls over, eyeing him, when Chris pushes himself off the bed. One arm strays in Chris’ direction but Peter is watchful, under the haziness. “I can see what I can find,” he says, voice slightly rough. “About the Restrepo boy.”

“Are you going to talk to teenagers?” Chris mutters.

“I have family in the school,” Peter says, the same way you might mention your relative’s a doctor to a sick person.

Chris can’t really work up the energy to do more than nod. Restrepo was the second death, and at this point Chris doesn’t think looking into him is going to turn up more than what’s already been found. If Peter wants to busy himself in that direction, the only real risk is that now he could think they’re in some sort of…agreement to talk more.

If that matters, when in less than a day Kate’s going to be in her grave. “Can I borrow your shower?”

A flicker of disappointment crosses Peter’s face, but he doesn’t voice it. Just flips his hand languidly in the right direction. 

Chris collects his clothes and heads into the bathroom. He only uses the soap and doesn’t take long, just washing what he needs to so he can avoid having to use a towel. He’s in there for maybe ten minutes before he comes back out, dressed, and by then Peter’s already gotten off the bed and wandered somewhere else in the apartment. Light is spilling from a room down the hall, and Chris hears the occasional click of a keyboard—home office, he guesses.

He doesn’t call as he lets himself out.

* * *

Something makes Chris turn into the bubble tea café instead of just walking out through the lobby. He can’t call it habit when he’s only been to the place once, and is just finishing up the round-trip, but that’s what he does. 

The café is closing up. He grimaces and nods at the cashier’s warning, backing out the way he came. Then he stops, because Derek Hale is just walking away from the lobby elevators.

He’s with two other boys, Stiles and Melissa’s son—Scott was his name. They’ve all got their backs to Chris and are heading towards what looks like a hall to the back entrance, with Derek in front. The other two lag behind, glancing at each other as if nervous. None of them are talking.

Chris waits till they’re out of sight. As long as he’s been doing this, his gut still wants to leap forward when that happens, but he keeps his place.

Then he moves, quietly crossing the room at an angle. He glances back at the lobby desk, but nothing seems to be different there, so he keeps on down the hall and then to the doors. Pauses there to look out through the glass at the lot till he spots the car with the light on.

It’s at the very end, but it’s still parked. He waits till the car has pulled out and is turning around to pull into the alley that leads out to the road, then turns back around and walks as quickly through the lobby as he can without attracting attention.

He goes out, looks back to confirm that the car hasn’t come out onto the road yet—it hasn’t—and then jogs to where his car is parked. Chris gets inside and starts the engine, and when Derek’s car pulls around the corner, Chris cuts in front of it. 

In the rearview mirror he can see Derek’s face over the steering wheel. The man isn’t happy, knuckles clenched so tight that they look whitened even to Chris, but he doesn’t seem particularly focused on the road. Someone—Scott, he’s in the driver’s seat—reaches towards Derek and Derek jerks back, then snaps at the man.

When the light changes, Chris drives down it till the car behind him turns, then uses the next turn to relocate them; the blocks here are short enough to do that. There’s a little traffic on the roads, but not enough for him to look innocuous once they leave the business district and head into residential areas. He turns off his lights and hangs back as far as he dares, and then, once he thinks they’re nearing their destination, he pulls into a side-road and parks.

He takes his gun. The crossbow would be quieter but too big and noticeable in this part of town. He also turns his phone to silent mode.

The neighborhood is close to the preserve, with large yards and small houses, and the occasional undeveloped lot. Derek’s car is a flashy number so it doesn’t take Chris that long to spot it in one of the driveways. He has less cover that he’d like for his approach, but it’s dark now and most of the houses have their lights off, and the streetlights only run halfway into the neighborhood.

It's quiet as he works his way up to the house. No TV on, no bedroom lights on. Just Derek’s car in the driveway, no one else’s, even though he knows that this isn’t where Derek lives. Either Stiles’ or Scott’s house, he thinks; he hasn’t had time to look into them. 

Something is wrong. Chris is standing at the back of the house, very close to a screen door that will take less than a minute to break into, and he has the same feeling he had when standing on the porch of the old Hale house in the woods. 

He takes his gun out of its holster and uses his phone light to check the bullets loaded into it, even though he already knows what he has. Then he puts his phone away, and gets into the house.

It’s equally dark and quiet indoors. He’s in the kitchen area and everything looks—clean. Spotless. Does someone live here at all?

Chris senses movement and whips around, aiming his gun. It’s shadow on shadow but he still manages to spot something moving away down the hall. He jerks over to the nearest wall and follows it towards the movement, then rounds a corner to find an open door into the basement. The staircase is dark but he can see a low, flickering light coming from somewhere, like someone has a bunch of electronics on. And then he hears: harsh, rough breathing, threaded through with a pained whine. He remembers how angry Derek had looked, and the way that Derek had ordered Stiles into the house.

Peter hadn’t talked to his nephew, but his nephew had talked to Peter, or something like that. Learned Chris had come over to Peter’s place, and then been furious with his subordinates, is Chris’ working theory.

The stairs are carpeted. Chris steps down as close to the wall as he can manage, to avoid creaks, and then assesses. He’s facing a wall, with the ability to go either way. The light seems to be stronger on the left, but the noises are coming from the right.

He goes right, following a hall that winds back around and then comes out into a large room, with a dark, shifting form in the middle of it. For now Chris hangs back at the corner, peering further until he can make out the outline of a doorway at one end of the room, which is where the light is coming from. The door’s shut.

Even with flashlight mode on phones, Chris keeps around an old-fashioned metal flashlight, heavy and durable enough to use as a club, or to block a knife. He gets it in his hand and puts it and the gun side-by-side, and then—turns it on.

Someone in a chair in the middle of the room. They let out a muffled noise when the light goes on, but Chris is busy sweeping the sides of the room. Then he comes back to them and—

Derek Hale’s wild, wide eyes stare back at Chris over a thick black strip of tape. He’s naked, arms disappearing around the back of the chair. His legs are visible and they’re taped to the chair legs. The chair isn’t that strong-looking but—Chris spots something thin trailing from the base. He looks up—his flashlight moves a little, Derek lets out another choked noise of—of _panic_.

There are wires. They’re taped to Derek’s groin—to his balls and to his flushed, erect cock. Chris tries to comprehend what he’s seeing, and then Derek abruptly throws himself forward against his bonds, whites of his eyes as stark as bone against flesh, neck engorged with a scream he can’t force through the tape.

Chris jerks his gun down to point at the floor, his better instincts just barely overriding his hunting ones. That’s when he sees the black plastic box that the wires are connected to.

He walks over to it and looks down at it, and…looks for too many seconds, while Derek thrashes and whines in the chair. He can’t get it, can’t make his mind work with what he’s seeing.

Then he does, and cursing, he drops to one knee and puts his gun and flashlight down. He’s got his hand on the off-switch and he’s pressing down, turning it off, watching the digital display blank out the numbers that had been too low for a werewolf, too low but Derek was already reacting and that means he’s _human_ , and then…

“Hands over your head,” someone behind Chris says in a shaky voice. “Please just—do it, I don’t want to fight you.”

“But he’s going to, if you try and make a move, so don’t even,” says another, steadier voice. “We know you’re an Argent and believe me, a hunter’s the _last_ person we want around here.”

Chris stays where he is, with one hand on the black box. Derek’s knee is barely inches from him, jutting out as the man slumps over as much as his bonds will let him. Sweat is dripping off him onto the floor. His head is down, but then it turns, and he and Chris look at each other.

“Derek,” says the first one, with the unmistakable growl of a werewolf in his voice. Even so, he sounds desperate. “Derek, don’t move, you’re just gonna make it—”

“Oh, for—”

And then someone shoots Chris in the back with a taser.


	5. Chapter 5

Melissa decided a long time ago that she doesn’t want Stiles to be around Scott anymore, but she just keeps on being reminded why when they talk her into coming over and she finds two naked men tied up in Stiles’ basement and Stiles telling her that if she doesn’t want to deal with it, he’s just going to kill Derek Hale.

“We don’t really need him anyway, we just needed him to get Argent there,” he says, as if this is any kind of explanation whatsoever.

“You said you weren’t going to do that,” Scott says sharply, but he’s giving Melissa a panicked look at the same time. Her son. Her loving, caring son, who was worried about his job at the clinic at first because his hands shook so bad on his first day that he nearly dropped a rabbit. “You said it was just so we didn’t have to use me, so they wouldn’t know who the real werewolf was—”

“Yeah, that was true, but now we’re done and we’ve got a _witness_ , Scott, does that not register?” Stiles says, like he’s just whining about some dumb school prank.

“If that goes for him, that goes for me and I’m not going to stand here and watch you kill him,” Melissa says.

Derek, filthy, with tape burns all over his legs, startles against the pipe he’s handcuffed to. Then he looks down at the ground, just as Stiles turns around. 

“Mom,” Scott says, wide-eyed with—with fear. “Wait, no, Stiles, she didn’t mean—”

“I’m gonna have to talk to Mom,” Stiles mutters. He rubs at the side of his face, then looks back at Melissa, and the one reason why she doesn’t slap him right now is because of that faint trace of fear in _his_ eyes. “And if you think you’re going to the rest of his family, or the police, even—”

And the other is the gun which Stiles has, and which he so casually waves in Melissa’s direction as if he’s used to holding something like that. Which, damn Claudia, he probably is at this point. “I don’t think killing Derek is going to help you avoid either of them,” she points out as calmly and reasonably as she can manage. “They’re used to him disappearing for a few days. They’re not used to him turning up dead, and you know Talia’s reputation for—you’ve seen the way Peter comes poking around the hospital records just when one of them’s been in some school fight.”

“Well, we could hide the body,” Stiles says, but he’s already turning away. “But whatever, I have to talk to her. Just—if you’re not going to do anything, you can’t leave yet other. Not till she shows up.”

“So Mom can go,” Scott says with a desperate hope in his voice.

Stiles twists back around. “What? No. She’s gotta stay, and you’ve gotta—Scott, it’s two days to the full moon, you know how you get.”

“I’m his mother,” Melissa points out.

“Right, and that saved you _last_ month,” Stiles says with a savagery that has her staring speechlessly at him. He snorts, jerks his chin at her leg, and she can’t help but move it slightly behind the other. Which makes him grin. “Stay over there.”

Melissa tries not to look at Scott. He’s looking at her, she can feel it, and he…he’s her son, her poor confused little boy who just wants to do what’s best, but right now he isn’t darting over and smashing the gun out of his best friend’s hand, even though he’s strong enough to do it. Right now he’s pleading with her to just make this okay, and she…can’t look at him. Even if it’s because he thinks this is the best way to protect her.

“No,” she says, and then draws a shaky breath when Stiles narrows his eyes. “I’ll look them over.”

“Oh. _Oh_ , okay, then, glad we’re getting with the program!” Stiles says with mock-cheer.

He gestures for her to take her bag and go over, and then he gets Scott to go to the other end of the basement. Scott gives her a helpless look over one shoulder but goes, and Melissa grits her teeth and…kneels down by her patients.

“I’m fine,” Derek mutters.

Melissa shakes her head, but doesn’t verbally push back. She just opens her bag and starts laying out supplies.

“What happened to him?” she asks about the other man, the one she’d caught trying to break into the medical records area.

Derek doesn’t answer. He just watches her, huddled back against the wall, making himself as small as possible. Before all of this started she remembers seeing him around town, sometimes with a few other boys from the school basketball team. He’d always been a little apart from the rest of them but he’d held himself as if the space between had highlighted him. 

Now he shifts away from her when she lifts her hands, even though she’s just ripping the packaging off some gauze. Behind her Melissa hears the talking falter, and then Stiles’ voice suddenly rises, telling Scott to ignore that. She tells herself to ignore the tight pinch between her shoulderblades, and the gut urge she has to turn around, that’s telling her something big and mean is right behind her and about to reach out.

She already knows that.

“This floor is dirty. It’ll get you infected if we don’t clean up some of that,” Melissa says instead, under her breath. She listens to herself, then grimaces and starts over, trying not to let so much come out into her voice. “The dirt is going to get into your—”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Derek says.

Melissa has a bottle of iodine and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Neither are very big, and the other man, he has tacky-looking blood drying down the side of his face. Then again, she thinks, looking at his closed eyes, if he’s got a head injury, neither of those are going to fix that.

She pushes that away and looks at Derek. “Then we’re going to have to clean off some of it, at least.”

“Okay,” Derek says noncommittally. His eyes are constantly flicking behind her.

The rubbing alcohol first, she decides. His skin doesn’t look broken on his legs or arms, just bruised and irritated. She uncaps that bottle and soaks the gauze with it, then moves forward on her knees.

She does it slowly, everything telegraphed, but Derek still stiffens. He’s staring at her and his stare is going glassy and too intent all at once, and for a second the urge to throw up is stronger than anything else.

“Goddamn it,” she warns herself. Derek takes that for him, and sucks a jagged breath between his teeth, fully watching her now, and she makes herself relax as much as she can. “So I’m going to wipe down your leg—your right one. Unless—unless you think if I give it to you, you can do—”

A flicker of contempt comes into Derek’s eyes; his hands are cuffed too high for him to twist that far. He shakes his head.

“Then I can do it, but I’ll be touching you,” Melissa finishes.

Derek’s lip curls as if he’s going to insult her. “Okay.”

She gives him another second before she reaches over. She can see him holding himself in place for it, although that isn’t as bad once her fingertips actually land on his leg.

There’s a sticky residue winding around the bottom part of his legs, attracting the grime to it. She rubs off what she can and uses the opportunity to check that the backs of his calves don’t have any injuries she can’t see. It doesn’t seem like it.

“I think you’re gonna have to work more on him,” Derek suddenly says. “He hit his head.”

The gauze pad’s used up so Melissa reaches between her legs to get another one, rather than have to move back and up again. She also gets the iodine, and lets Derek see the label before she soaks the pad. “Where?”

“His forehead, on the corner of—” Derek shuts up. 

It’s sharp enough that Melissa looks over her shoulder, but Stiles and Scott are still standing at the other end. Too close, she automatically thinks, and has to bite back the urge to tell Stiles to get away from him. Even though…even though Scott is the one with his hand on Stiles’ arm, with his head hanging as if it’s about to drop to the other boy’s shoulder.

“He’s in recovery position, he can wait till I’m done with you,” Melissa says, turning back.

Derek doesn’t laugh but the twist of his lips says the same thing. He flicks his gaze to the pad in her hand, then to her face, and the disbelief slowly fades into tension. “I’m fi—”

“Are you?” Melissa asks. It comes out accusing, and she doesn’t mean—needs it to not be. She’s a nurse, she helps people, she does it for anyone who needs it and she needs to remember that. “Look, Derek…this is iodine, it’s just to—”

“I know,” Derek says, with a little bit of his old irritation. For a moment she’s almost hopeful he might stick to that, and it’ll be what works for both of them, and then he bites his lip. His shoulders push back against the wall, as much as his twisted arms will allow, and then he suddenly won’t meet her eyes. “Okay, fine. And don’t tell me it’s going to sting.”

Melissa manages to limit herself to a nod. She reaches down under his scrotum, keeping her hand about an inch below it with her fingers spread. Then she brings it up and nudges it forward just enough so that she can use the pad to dab at some of the angry red circles spotted over his skin. When she first touches him, Derek sucks his breath again, but then he’s silent. So much so that she has to look up to see that he’s still breathing.

“You’re gonna look at Argent at some point, right?” Stiles suddenly calls to them, so they both jump. “We need him.”

“I’ll get to that,” Melissa says, unable to bear to turn around or to keep her tone nice.

Scott says something and Stiles doesn’t yell anything else, and for a moment Melissa is grateful to her son. Then the thought of that curdles on her, _grateful_ , and…she has to stop tending to Derek to gather herself.

“It wasn’t what you think,” Derek mumbles. When she glances up, he’s still not meeting her eyes. He thinks about it, once she starts wiping at his cock—his jaw muscle tics as dried semen comes off on the pad—but he doesn’t. “Scott—”

Melissa is cold all over. “What?”

Derek looks at her now. He’s withdrawn, not aggressive, and as big and muscled as he is, she’s reminded of nothing else but a scared animal hiding under a car. She’s seen her son—her _son_ , she’s seen him coax them out from under those, winning over their trust with nothing but his voice and his outstretched hand. Back when Scott took care of things.

“He said it’d be okay if he watched the levels,” Derek says to her, as quietly as he can, and then he stiffens and looks past her.

She’s already heard the footsteps and hurries to finish as much as she can. She’d like to bandage him—what she sees looks dangerously close to a burn in a few places—but she knows to move on instead, and to just drop the crumpled gauze wad on the floor and shift over to this other man. Chris— _Argent_ , whatever that’s worth.

“He’s breathing,” Melissa mutters, carefully bracing Chris’ head with her hand. They’ve at least got him lying fully prone on the floor, but the burst welt on his forehead looks bad. She doesn’t even want to wipe off all the blood in case the clot’s stemming something. “I don’t think he’s going to die, but I don’t know when he’s going to wake up.”

“That’s fine, it’s not like we need him to talk,” Stiles says. He pauses. “Mom’s coming. I think I talked her into this whole company idea, but we’re gonna have to see.”

“Thanks,” Scott says earnestly, and Melissa tries not to think about slapping her own son.

“That said, that means you’re gonna have to stick around, and stick _with_ us,” Stiles adds.

Melissa has to turn anyway to get something from her kit. When she does, he’s eyeing Derek who’s managed to pull up a shallow version of his irritated scowl. Then Stiles looks at her. He’s so very much not the babbling, almost accidentally forward kid she used to feed leftovers whenever his parents’ shifts didn’t let them pick him up from school, and for a second she thinks he sees that too. He pulls himself back a little, his hands fidgeting.

“Let’s go up,” Scott says, interrupting it. He puts his hand on Stiles’ shoulder and then turns to Melissa. “We’re going to wait upstairs for his mom.”

“Right,” Melissa says, ignoring the silent plea in Scott’s look.

Stiles recovers and allows Scott to direct him, with overdone graciousness, to the staircase, and Melissa can get on with her work. She cleans up what makes sense on Chris, repositions him so that if he starts to wake, he’s less likely to bang his head again against the wall or the pipes, and then begins to pull together all the medical trash.

“They can hear us,” Derek says. He looks up when she looks over. “From up there. You know that, right?”

“Scott can,” Melissa tells him, because as far as she knows, her son is the only werewolf here.

Derek looks oddly at her. “Then they both can hear us.”

Melissa presses her lips together. She doesn’t want to—however unhelpful Derek is acting, she can’t hold that against him, so she gives him a nod and keeps on with what she’s doing. But there’s only so much trash, and she runs out of it, and then…

She’s sitting there. Because she heard it too: there’s one door out of this basement, and Stiles is in her way, and her son’s not going to move him out of the way. She’s stuck here with them.

* * *

It becomes clear that Claudia’s not going to arrive anytime soon. Melissa can’t get into the locked office where she knows Stiles has all sorts of computer equipment set up, and she knows better than to call on her phone, but she scrounges around the basement to find a couple blankets to throw over Derek and Chris.

She and Derek don’t really have much to say to each other. She’d like to ask if his mother or uncle know where he is, or will notice he’s missing, but he’s not going to answer that when they don’t know what’s going on upstairs. She sits with him anyway, though she thinks to herself that this is more for her benefit than his, and doesn’t feel great about it. But then, what does she have to feel good about, these days?

Scott comes back down after about forty minutes, bringing some food in take-out containers with him. Cold stir-fry and rice, with plastic spoons to eat it with. He hands Melissa a container first, and then, as she pries off the lid, he moves past her. 

Melissa drops the container as she twists around. “Sco—”

Derek is pushing himself up into a kneeling position. He stops and he and Scott both look at her, startled. Scott bites his lip, ducks his head, then fumbles with one of the remaining containers. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbles. “But I don’t think Stiles actually wants to kill you, I think he’s just saying that because he’s worried.”

From the way Derek’s mouth thins out, he believes that as much as Melissa does. But he goes back to moving onto his knees as Scott opens the container and sets it between them. The blanket slides down him and he jerks at his cuffed hands, then grimaces and leans against the pipes behind him. Scott looks up, then puts a tentative hand out and picks at the blanket till it’s back over Derek’s lap. Derek doesn’t flinch.

“His mom’s going to decide,” Derek says. Asks. Maybe. It’s hard to tell when his voice is pitched that low.

“We got it without the carrots,” Scott says, and at first he sounds as if he’s gone insane. Digging into the food and then holding it out for Derek, looking like he hopes this makes up for some of it.

What’s even more insane is that Derek snorts and just leans forward for the spoon, as if—as if this isn’t any different from what he expected. Maybe Melissa’s the one who’s gone insane. She and Rafael hadn’t had the best marriage, but you read about the kinds of families that produce serial killers and you don’t think—she hadn’t thought—

“…till late, maybe not till tomorrow morning,” Scott’s saying. “Mom.”

Right by her, and before she can help herself, she kicks out and pushes off the floor with her hand.

Something catches under her and she lands almost immediately, awkwardly, a round plastic bowl skittering away in the other direction and leaving a skip-mark of soy sauce in its wake. The carpet doesn’t run over to this part of the basement and she bruises herself on the concrete. She can feel her little finger stiffening by the time she wrenches it out from under herself.

Scott is still where he was, by Derek. He’d just raised his voice and now he looks white-faced. The plastic is crumpling where he’s got his fingers wrapped over the rim. “I just—Mom—”

“It’s not the full moon yet,” Derek hisses, looking wildly between them. He looks _angry_ at Melissa, as if this is her fault. “Scott, listen, it’s not—don’t—”

Scott’s eyes are reddening. His nails are long and pointed, and Melissa has a flash-memory of the way they’d ripped through the door—and then she puts her head down. Stares at the tiny pocks in the concrete where the air bubbles had come out, and tells herself that if this is what her mothering had raised, then this is her son. _Hers_.

“Okay. Okay.” When she looks up again, Scott has put the food down and is grabbing at one side of his hair with his hand, his head bent between his drawn-up knees. “Okay, I’m—okay.”

“Just do the breathing. Nobody’s gonna take you on, not down here,” Derek says. He gets a little stuck on the last few words and his expression isn’t nearly as calm as he’s trying to make himself sound, but he’s trying. “Don’t let it happen—please.”

“He knows?” Melissa asks.

Scott stays hunched over for another second, then suddenly raises his head. “Oh…yeah,” he says after a moment. His eyes are brown and clear, and when he picks up the stir-fry again, he touches the permanently-rippled rim as if someone else had done that. “Derek’s known for a while, Mom.”

Derek shoots Melissa a warning look. “Can we just eat?” he says. “If Stiles has to talk to his mom, you don’t want him annoyed at having to deal with Scott.”

“Do we even know what he’s going to say to his mother?” Melissa says.

She doesn’t really want to eat, to be honest, but Scott seems to relax when she crawls back over and retrieves her takeout. He feeds Derek another spoonful, but when Derek points out that he should have some, he just pokes the spoon around in the food. “He knows it wouldn’t be a good idea to attract attention,” he says. “Not till we figure out how to make me safe. I think he just—he just—we didn’t think that guy would go back to Peter.”

“If you want to get me my phone, I can call him and make something up,” Derek says.

“Are you kidding me?” Melissa says before she can help it. “Do you want them to kill you?”

Derek starts to bite something back at her, then stops as Scott sucks his breath. “Mom, look, I know—I know, okay?” he says without looking at her. “I know this isn’t—but Stiles’ mom is doing something, and I think we just—if we can just wait till she’s done, then…”

Claudia Stilinski is _always_ doing something, Melissa almost shouts at them. Always, ever since her husband had ended up in a coma, she’s always been trying something. First it’d been threatening the fraternity who’d thrown that party, then it’d been mail-order homeopathic medicine, and now it was just plain psychopathic behavior. If she ever got done, it’d be over their dead bodies. Didn’t they see that?

And then Melissa realizes: they do. They know all of that and they’re just going through the motions right now, because there’s nothing else to do. Stiles is upstairs with a gun, and even if Scott is down here, and has more than enough strength to rip out those pipes and take that gun away from his friend…they know why he can’t do that. She knows why. And she knows why, for all of the disgust and anger boiling inside of her, she can’t change that.

She wants to, she thinks. Maybe it’s too late, but she can’t bring himself to admit it. This is her son, and she knows that now better than she did before.

Melissa picks up the other plastic container and opens it, and eats two mouthfuls. The way Scott’s face lights up for a moment almost makes her forget why they’re in this basement.

Then Scott stiffens. His head turns towards the ceiling.

When Stiles comes down the stairs, they’re all a couple feet away from each other. The food containers are neatly shut, and Scott’s wiped up the soy sauce from the floor. He’s still over by Derek, but sitting cross-legged with his back to him.

“Mom’s running late,” Stiles announces. He’s left the gun somewhere but has one of those big military-grade tasers with him. “She’s not big on the idea of keeping Derek around—”

Scott jerks up, his eyes wide; behind him Derek is pressing himself against the pipes as if he thinks he can merge into them. “Stiles, _no_ —”

“What are you trying to do?” says a new voice. Chris, struggling up from under the blanket. He’s on his elbows but he’s already listing, trying to touch his head even though the chain on his cuffs is too short. “Drive him crazy when the full moon’s coming? You don’t kill packmates in front of each other. Not unless you’re going to kill them all at once.”

Stiles blinks rapidly. Then frowns and comes up a couple feet, but not close enough for any of them to reach him. “You checked him, right?”

He’s speaking to Melissa, who considers telling Stiles there’s no X-ray machine down here and then decides to just nod. She doesn’t want to sound like him.

“You tased the hell out of me, you didn’t wipe my memory,” Chris mutters. He gets a knee under himself, then uses the wall to brace his back. “And it’s not like you need more than a couple minutes to see what’s going on here.”

“Says the guy who thought Derek was the werewolf killer,” Stiles scoffs.

Chris feels at the side of his head, but stops when he touches the butterfly strips Melissa had tacked over his blood clots. “Just because I’m wrong about which one was the werewolf, doesn’t mean I’m wrong about how werewolves act. I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been alive.”

Scott and Derek both snap their eyes to Stiles, expecting something terrible, and even Melissa can’t help—wishing she wasn’t sitting right in front of Chris. But Stiles looks…he’s not happy, that’s clear, but he also looks uncertain about what to do about it. He’s Scott’s age and it's showing. And Chris has been awake longer than he’s been letting on. He’d been like this in the hospital too, good at deflecting. 

“What do you mean, kill a packmate?” Melissa asks, just to keep the target moving.

“Werewolves need packs. Keeps them sane.” Chris finally turns around and peers at them. He’s squinting and trying to prop his head against his hands as if it hurts, but he’s speaking clearly enough. “If that’s what you’re trying to do, get him through it, killing people in front of him isn’t going to keep him anchored. Killing a packmate’s going to be even worse.”

“Since when was Derek a packmate?” Stiles says icily.

He keeps looking at Chris, but beyond him Melissa can see Scott flushing and dropping his head. Her son’s never been great at keeping a secret; she knew Scott and Derek knew each other through Cora, but she hadn’t thought—she hadn’t even known Scott was interested in boys.

“I don’t know. Hadn’t gotten that far,” Chris says dryly.

Stiles stares at him, and then breaks out into an incredulous laugh. He looks too much like his mother that way. “Yeah, well, since we have an expert now…if Scott’s got a pack, why is he still losing his mind at full moons? He’s an alpha, that shouldn’t happen.”

Chris’ eyes flicker at that word, ‘alpha,’ but it’s hard to tell what’s causing it. “Alphas want to make other werewolves. He hasn’t bitten you, has he? You don’t look like you’re a werewolf.”

“Yeah, for good reason. _Someone_ around here has to keep Scott from mangling people,” Stiles snaps back, ignoring how Scott winces. “So you’re saying he’s going to be like that till he bites someone.”

“Bites and turns. It helps balance things out,” Chris says. He pauses. “I know you know I’m a hunter, but we don’t kill just any werewolf. We just kill the ones who get out of hand. If you’re looking for help to avoid that—”

“Not what you’re here for,” Stiles says curtly.

“Well, in that case, if you want me in one piece, you might want to think about which one of us gets chained to these pipes when he gets worked up,” Chris says. He shifts back against them, grimacing, and then lets his weight drag him down a few inches. “So—”

“What if it was you?” Stiles says. “You know things.”

Scott jerks forward onto his hands, as if he’s going to get up, and Stiles turns and looks at him. He stops but mouths something at Stiles, who ignores it. 

“Did the one who bit _him_ like him? How’d that go?” Chris asks. He leans his head against the wall, looking at Stiles. “Yeah, didn’t think so. Besides, you usually want a minimum of two betas. If you just do one, then you’re back in the same place if they get killed or taken off.”

The word ‘beta’ makes Stiles’ eyes spark. He’s interested now, and listening in spite of himself. “Two.”

“Yeah, and it helps if they like each other.” Chris seems to hesitate for a moment, his eyes flicking to Melissa for some reason, and then he looks directly back at Stiles. “Sex helps, if you haven’t gotten there yet. Same kind of urge, but less likely to kill you. Usually.”

“We’ve actually gotten pretty far with pretty much nothing but us,” Stiles says acidly. He unconsciously straightens the front of his shirt and Melissa knows that tic of his means he’s feeling unsure of himself. “Anyway. Scott.”

“I don’t see why we need to do anything now,” Scott says quietly, his voice a little cracked. “We can’t go out till later anyway, you know—it’s not a good idea for me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know,” Stiles says, and his voice softens a little. He takes a half-step back. “Look, I’m going to call my mom again. Just—”

“I’m gonna watch them. Nobody’s going anywhere till she comes,” Scott says earnestly. “I promise.”

Stiles actually smiles at him. “I know your word’s good. Thanks, Scott.”

He takes a couple more back-steps, then turns as he comes up to the corner, disappearing around it. Scott exhales loudly, dropping back on sit heavily as he flexes and unflexes his fingers against the concrete floor. Derek looks at him, worried, and then leans forward, and that’s when Melissa gets up.

“Scott,” she says. She walks over to her son, and then, as he looks up, holds her hand out. She tries not to let it show when he stares dumbly at it, and her insides fall apart. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Behind him, Derek peels his lips back as if to say something to Melissa, but doesn’t. Scott takes her hand very carefully, then lets himself be pulled up. Derek stares after him and—he’s naked and chained up and what’s happened to him, Melissa can’t…let herself think too long on it, if she wants to keep her mind straight enough to think about this. She can’t let him. She needs to talk to Scott.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given the way people are, I suppose I should forestall protests by mentioning that this is not going to be my usual take on Stiles. Or Peter. Or any of the usuals, to be honest. Keep watching the tags.


	6. Chapter 6

They aren’t going anywhere but the basement, but Melissa manages to coax Scott into the bend in the hallway, so that Derek and Chris can’t see and hopefully can’t overhear them. “Scott—”

“I know, Mom,” Scott says in a hurried, whispered rush. He darts looks to either side of them, then drops his head to pull at his hair, his body folding in on itself so that they’re nearly the same height. “I know, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know this isn’t—isn’t _right_ —”

She wants to ask why he’s letting it happen anyway, but she knows that’s not going anywhere. “I thought we were trying to keep them from finding out about us,” she says instead, even as the words prick her tongue with their bitterness. “Hunters. I thought that that’s what Stiles and Cl—and his mother found out, that they were looking for werewolves.”

Scott lifts his head just enough to look at her and his pale, drawn face makes her want to just reach out and pull him in. She still can’t help feeling that; she’s had his face in her life for all of _his_ life.

But that’s not the only thing there is to being a mother. Love isn’t enough, and she has to face up to that. “I thought they said the Argents were a big deal too, a lot of people. Somebody’s going to come looking for him, and if he’s already dead—”

“They don’t want to kill him,” Scott says, and something about the way he wrenches that out of his throat, as if he’s got to get the words out before they strangle him from within, makes her look sharply at him. He ducks away from it, shifting like he might flee from her. “They are a big deal, and he’s the son of the leader. That’s why we have to keep him. If we let him go, we don’t have anything to bargain with.”

“Well, what the hell do they think we’re bargaining for?” Melissa hisses before she can help herself. “Scott, you need to think for—did you think about this? The Hales know everyone important in this town and Talia Hale can get us in prison—why she hasn’t already, I don’t know but I don’t think it’s good—”

Scott’s head jerks up again. “She doesn’t know, Mom,” he says, oddly determined. “Derek’s not going to tell. He can keep a secret.”

“He—” Melissa chokes, and then she grabs Scott’s arm “—he’s not your friend, Scott, you don’t do this to your _friends_. You—you tortured him and used him to get this other—”

“That wasn’t the plan!” Scott cries out, his voice rising. Then he grimaces and grabs her back at the elbow, dragging at her till she has to bite her lip against the pain. 

Scott sees. He lets her go, and she yanks away from him on instinct, cradling her arm against her front. She sees him look at her, sees her son rise up a little, anguish and guilt in his eyes, and sees him disappear beneath an awful, awful blankness. 

“Mom,” he says. He pauses and the word settles uneasily between them. “Mom. I’m trying to explain to you. I don’t—I don’t want to end up hurting you again.”

If she were a better woman, Melissa thinks, she’d lie and tell Scott that he hasn’t hurt her. Maybe. Maybe that’s not as better as she used to think.

“I don’t think I—I don’t think we knew exactly who this Chris guy was before,” Scott goes on. Somebody else is looking out from his eyes, is giving him the words. “Stiles did some more digging, and this family of his—they do kill werewolves. They kill alphas, like me. They’re known for it. They don’t just—they don’t just show up, so if he’s here, they must think it’s really important to take me out.”

“He didn’t pay any attention to you when we were at the hospital,” Melissa points out. “He didn’t even know—he didn’t know it’s you. He doesn’t know you, Scott. He thought it was Derek, and he probably looked up Derek’s family, not us, and if he did—so if we told him—”

“Mom, it doesn’t work like that,” Scott says in a resigned tone. “Look, you don’t know how this works.”

“I’m just trying to understand,” Melissa says.

Something flicks through Scott’s eyes, something red. “It’s a little late.”

Melissa opens her mouth, then can’t. She is so angry, she thinks. Even more than the fear, she’s angry—but she can’t tell him she’s not. They both know that.

“I didn’t really want you involved, but Stiles said you were going to find out anyway,” Scott says, a little more softly. “He says if you’re going to keep asking questions, and trying to figure out what we’re doing—”

“I know he and Claudia wish I wouldn’t,” Melissa says, finding her voice again.

Scott frowns. “He says I should tell you, so you get why we have to do this. He doesn’t hate you as much as you seem to think, Mom.”

“What about his mother?” Melissa says.

“His mom’s just trying to protect him—us,” Scott says, a little more sharply. “She _saw_ them trying to kill me, remember? She doesn’t want to see that again.”

Melissa glances at the floor. Goddamn it, she thinks dully. Scott is going to be eighteen soon, and…for seventeen years she was a pretty good mother, she thinks. She was there for all the big moments. And for two weeks she wasn’t, and that two weeks feels like a lifetime.

“The idea is that we keep Chris until we can reach his family, and get them to leave us alone. They’re really well-known, and if they say to stay away from here, a lot of other people will listen,” Scott says. He starts off slow, but as he talks, his voice strengthens. He believes in what he’s saying. “This is…is not nice, but we would only have to do it once.”

“So where does killing Derek come into this?” Melissa asks.

“We’re not killing him,” Scott almost snaps at her. Then he glances nervously over their heads. “Stiles just—he didn’t really mean that, he’s stressed out, Mom, he’s been working really hard to plan this and make sure we knew where Chris was all the time, and he got a little pissed off that Derek changed things—”

Melissa just keeps her incredulous laugh to a snort. “So you’re telling me it was _Derek’s_ idea to do—whatever you did to him?”

“Derek was going to tell his uncle to back off of Chris,” Scott says, and this time his eyes are red, and his voice is starting to turn into a growl. “They were meeting up, and we don’t know what about, and Derek didn’t—he didn’t listen to Stiles and he was just going to go over there and—so Stiles got upset. And anyway, it got Chris to follow us here.”

It's on the tip of Melissa’s tongue to point out that either they trust Derek or they don’t, and if they do, they shouldn’t have to cuff him naked to some pipes. But this is not the fight to have, she senses. 

“We’re not going to kill him. I think Stiles just wanted him to—to know how serious this is. Just scare him some,” Scott says. He’s starting to gasp a little in between growls, like how he did when asthma was still an issue. 

“Baby, don’t,” Melissa says, old habits coming up, and he jerks towards her.

She flinches. He wasn’t actually attacking her, she realizes too late; he was surprised, and for a moment, she thinks, he’d been hoping. But that goes away, and it’s not much consolation that it seems to have snapped him out of his alpha fit either, with how disappointed he looks in her.

“Stiles’ mom is trying to get hold of Chris’ family. I don’t think it’s going to take that long, and then we’ll be safe,” Scott finally says. He looks at her for a couple more seconds, shifting on his feet, and then turns to go back down the hall, towards where Derek and Chris are. “If you want to go up, you can, but I’m going to make sure we don’t lose Chris.”

“Scott,” Melissa says, but her voice is faltering, and he doesn’t look back. 

* * *

Melissa isn’t going upstairs where Stiles is. She has nothing to say to him at this point. His mother is a horror in her own right, but Stiles is too smart and too old at this point to not know better. He’d always been making cracks about Rafael, back when Melissa’s marriage had been breaking up, and even then he’d…said things that had made her look twice at him. Not because she’d disagreed, but because she had agreed, and for a kid his age to have that kind of insight in all the ways that a man could make life a living hell without even lifting a finger…

She’d chalked it up to just precociousness and parents who let him read and watch things way beyond his maturity level, because she’d known Noah and Claudia Stilinski, and she couldn’t have even imagined otherwise. 

She wonders now, sitting in the basement hallway with her knees pulled up under her chin. Claudia had been kind, back then. Had even taken her and Scott in for a night here or there, when things at home had gotten too much. Noah had helped make them feel at home but it'd been Claudia who’d made the offer, after hearing things from Stiles.

It'd been Claudia who’d made the same offer, when Scott was afraid to stay home with his own mother. So kind of her.

The floor under Melissa starts to numb her flesh, and then make her bones ache. She gets up to stretch out, and then stays up, a sudden restlessness taking over her.

There’s dread in it too. She doesn’t think she’s going to like what’s around the corner, but at the same time, she can’t keep standing here and letting it eat her away, just like she couldn’t just hide in her bedroom, knowing that out there her son was now the kind of thing other people wanted to kill.

Her arm still hurts where Scott had grabbed her. She pushes up her sleeve and grimaces at the bruising, and then reluctantly makes her way down the hall. She’s just about to turn into the open space when she hears it: a soft metallic clink.

Then again, a longer one, not just one piece of metal against other, but several. She looks out into the room, and the far end doesn’t have anyone.

The clinking stops as Melissa eases around the corner, and then she hears it, but more muffled, as if something’s been thrown over it. She also hears a low, sharp exchange, and after that, a harsh exhale, as if someone had just pushed back from something and then slumped.

She walks over, holding her bruised arm against herself. Scott’s not the cause of it, she sees first: he’s curled up on the floor, his head pillowed on part of the blanket that’s over Derek’s legs, and he’s out cold.

“I don’t think you should wake him,” Derek says as soon as he sees Melissa. He’s pushed back in an awkward position against the pipes, though as she comes towards him, he shifts so that it’s more natural. “It’s not great for his control when he’s tired.”

“I know,” she tells him, gently. He’d been the one who’d gasped.

Derek stares warily at her, then tugs himself around a little more. His knees shift so that he’s almost bookending Scott’s head with them, like he’s being protective. His mouth attracts her attention for some reason, and it takes a moment for her to identify why: it’s flushed and a little wet, and when he realizes what she’s looking at, a faint red starts across his cheekbones.

She looks at Chris, who’s sagging against the pipes with his head on his arms, eyes closed as if he’s dozing. But the blanket being pulled almost off him tells its own story.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” comes out, and with a distant shock Melissa recognizes her own voice.

“I’m tied up in a basement, with people who have good reason to kill me,” Chris says in an even tone. At least he lifts his head, and doesn’t keep acting as if he’s sleeping.

“Well, if you’re going to go around talking about sex with teenagers when you’re killing werewolves, I think we can all see why,” Melissa snaps.

Derek’s brows twitch, but unlike Scott or Stiles, he’s learned somewhere to keep out of other people’s arguments. He just watches them both as Chris slowly straightens up so that he’s sitting. 

“I’m not killing anyone. And if you don’t want anyone to die, then I think we need to talk about what werewolves really are like,” Chris says. He looks Melissa in the eye, then glances at the ground, and it’s not out of shame. “You want to have a seat?”

She thinks about going back to the hallway. She can spot someone trying to set up something—she’s a lot better at that than she used to be—but…pretending this isn’t happening won’t help either.

Melissa sits down, far enough so that she doesn’t think Chris can kick her. “I don’t want my son or Derek to die,” she says. “I don’t know anything about you, except you came here looking for werewolves.”

“I didn’t come here looking to kill them. I came here because somebody else is killing them. We work with packs,” Chris says, slow and deliberate.

She knows that tone. She uses it with patients who still have it together enough to argue with her, but who don’t know what’s going to be good for them and what won’t. It’s—it’s pretty patronizing coming from a naked man chained in a basement. What exactly does he think he has over them?

“I’m trying to get all of us out of this alive,” Chris says in a slightly quieter voice. “It’ll be better for your son if we work this out before the rest of my family gets here.”

“I thought you didn’t kill werewolves,” Derek suddenly says.

Chris glances at him, and Derek stiffens but pushes himself up over Scott. “We don’t go to that right away, but we do it if we have to. And we’re going to do it if my—if our leader thinks we’re under threat. It’s the same as what you would do, going after someone who you think is trying to kill you.”

“Well, I’m not sure how you’re going to try and convince us you don’t feel threatened,” Melissa says. She realizes her hands are trembling, and she drops them into her lap. “I’m not going to—I’m not going to pretend. This is what my son has done, him and his friend.”

“Yeah, about his friend…” The way Chris lets himself trail off, he’s inviting someone to correct him.

Derek’s lip curls but he doesn’t say anything. Whatever Chris had been feeding him before, he seems to have gotten his head cleared, and he’s watching Chris as warily as he is Melissa.

“He’s not a werewolf,” Chris finally adds, once he realizes they aren’t going to jump in. “Stiles isn’t.”

“No,” Derek says, startled, and the beginning of more almost makes it out of his mouth before he ducks his head.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t really want to see that either,” Chris says. “But he’s acting like he’s the alpha, not your son. Do you even know what an alpha is?”

Melissa doesn’t, and she’s pretty sure that Chris guessed that before he asked. He’s trying to make her feel less than she already does, more ignorant than she already knows herself to be. She keeps reminding herself that this doesn’t mean he deserves his treatment, but she—she’s not the person she used to be.

“He’s not a werewolf. He just can get Scott to listen to him,” Derek says, as if this is something he and Chris have already gone over, and he’s irritated they’re wasting time on it again. “And he’s looked up a lot of stuff about werewolves—he knows who your family is.”

“I don’t know about that,” Chris mutters. He shifts on his knees, then sighs as the blanket sags over his legs. “Sorry.”

“I’m a nurse, I’ve seen it,” Melissa says before she can help himself.

Chris glances at her, amused, and Melissa finds herself looking away now. She digs her nails into her palms where they’re hidden in her lap. “How long has he been one?”

“Why?” Melissa asks, cutting off Derek as he almost says “three.”

“Wondering how many full moons he’s gone through,” Chris says. “Just as a werewolf. He’s young to be an alpha. And if he got that way by killing the one who bit him, then that’s even more to have to take on without people to help him.”

Melissa winces. Then jerks her head back up, glaring at Chris, and she knows he’s guessed at it, she knows she’s just helping him make that guess even more accurate, but—“Do you have kids of your own?”

That hits something, she thinks, watching the way his eyes change. “I’ve seen enough kids end up this way,” he says lowly. “You don’t want to have to kill them, but if they can’t control themselves and they end up killing other people—or they don’t want to control themselves—”

“That’s not the _problem_ ,” Derek spits out.

“How do you know?” Melissa snaps.

She really means it for Chris, but Derek’s the one who’d just spoken, and—she regrets it, but it’s too late to take it back. Derek’s already glowering at her. “He doesn’t want to be like this—he didn’t want to go after you, he just couldn’t tell who you were. If you hadn’t made him leave, he wouldn’t have ended up staying with Stiles.”

“I didn’t— _make_ —him,” Melissa grates out. “Have you tried to make him back off? When he’s—when his face has changed and his claws—”

“I didn’t get to talk to him before Stiles got to him,” Derek snaps back. “And I tried. He wasn’t the same—he wouldn’t talk to me. I had to show up at Stiles’ house when he wasn’t there.”

“Does Stiles talk him out of it?” Chris asks. “When he’s shifted?”

Derek and Melissa start at the same time, looking at each other instead of him. Then Derek presses his lips together and pulls back.

His knee nudges Scott, who abruptly moves. Then goes still, as they all hold their breath. Scott is like that until Melissa almost thinks she can breathe again, when something makes him bolt upright. He stares in the direction of the staircase, eyes wild, before slowly exhaling. His hands are in fists but he lets them uncurl.

“Scott,” Melissa says.

He twitches, then glances at her. Then rolls onto one hand and pushes himself up. “Stiles is coming down.”

“His mom?” Derek says, moving back against the pipes.

“No. No, he—he wants Chris,” Scott says. He pauses, looking at Derek, a faint frown starting to cross his face. His nostrils flare.

Melissa hisses and he shakes himself out of it, and twists sharply to look a plea at her. “Just a photo, Mom. Nobody’s dying, we just need to prove it’s really him.”

Chris doesn’t say anything. When Melissa turns around, the man has his lips pressed together but doesn’t seem all that surprised. Maybe he’s just been through crazy, terrible things like this that often, and Melissa should feel sorry for him. 

“Just, please, don’t try anything,” Scott continues, looking at Chris now. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Mostly, she thinks, she feels as if everyone but her knows better.

* * *

Picture-taking is going to happen upstairs. Stiles has the gun out again, even though Scott is the one to uncuff Chris and pull him along by one arm. Part of Melissa thinks they might be lying, both of them. It’d be easier if Scott was the kind of boy who could lie that convincingly to her.

“You think they’re going to bring him back?”

Melissa frowns, then looks over at Derek. He’d been tense the entire time Stiles had been in the same room with them, eyes constantly on the gun, but hadn’t said a word. He’d seemed fine with that. “I have no idea. Why, did you—”

“I didn’t—” he changes what he means to say at the last moment “—I’m not listening to him try and screw us over to get out of this, but he’s supposed to be a hunter. He’s supposed to know about all of this and it’s either listen to him or to Stiles.”

In spite of herself, Melissa asks: “Well, what did he say?”

“Something about Stiles ‘anchoring’ Scott,” Derek says after a moment. “It’s a werewolf thing, that keeps them from losing their minds. They need to focus on something, or somebody.”

“So that’s what they call it,” Melissa says dully. She’d figured that one out a while ago, even if she hadn’t had the expert term for it. So had Stiles and his damned mother. Using her son as their pet strongman—she presses her hand against the side of her face. “I don’t think that really shows he knows much.”

“He also said…he said if Scott’s an alpha, that’s strange. Alphas are the leaders of packs, and they don’t usually need someone else to anchor them like that,” Derek goes on. He sounds a little tentative, as if he’s feeling his way through the words. “But maybe it’s because Scott doesn’t have a proper pack around him. This happens a lot to new werewolves, they go crazy because nobody wants to be around them.”

It wasn’t that she had wanted to lose Scott, but she’d come into his bedroom and she’d seen him like that—and then he’d _leaped_ at her, and she’d turned to run and her leg—Melissa shakes that away. Feels a stab of anger at herself, when she realizes she’s reached down to touch that leg. 

“So I think he’s trying to get me to agree that Scott needs to make some more werewolves,” Derek says.

“Starting with you and him?” Melissa asks.

Derek looks defensive. “I didn’t tell him either way. He just tried to talk me into it.”

“Did he _just_ talk?” Melissa says. Then, as his defensiveness starts to harden, she sighs and tries to make herself less…to hide her bitterness. She puts her hand out, then stops as he flinches back. “I’m not…blaming you. You’re chained up, Derek. You can’t stop him.”

“He was chained up too,” Derek points out.

“He’s a grown man and his great idea is to harass you when my son’s already—” Melissa cuts herself off.

Derek had paled, but he keeps looking her in the eye. “It wasn’t his idea. It was Stiles. The whole—the whole set-up. And Stiles was the one who was pissed off because I tried to talk to Peter.”

“He’s still the werewolf, Derek, he could stop Stiles if he wanted to and he didn’t,” Melissa says, more harshly than she means. 

“He _can’t_ , that’s the whole point. If he loses it, Stiles is the only one who can talk him back,” Derek hisses.

“Well, does that matter if Stiles wants someone killed anyway?” Melissa says.

Derek isn’t convinced. He’s looking at her again as if this is her fault, and she wants to scream in his face that she’s been _trying_. She’s been trying to talk to Scott, she’s tried to tell her son she still loves him. It’s just when his eyes redden, or his silhouette changes, she can’t help it: she remembers when he tried to kill her.

“How did you and him get so close anyway?” she asks, out of a lack of anything else. “I didn’t even really think you knew each other, except you came to some of the lacrosse games with Cora.”

For a second, she thinks Derek is just going to lapse back into silence. But then he snorts, and his mouth even twists into a crooked smile. “He walked in on me and another guy at Jungle,” he says. “Didn’t say anything either, not even to Cora. I caught up with him later and told him I’d end him if he did, and…he didn’t tell you about that either.”

“You did what,” Melissa says flatly. “Derek—does anyone really care? Your family doesn’t, I know that from how your uncle gets around. And I don’t care who he does it with, I just care that he thinks the damn hospital’s going to patch up anyone he sends its way.”

“People care that it’s me and it’s another thing they can say about my family,” Derek snaps. “Now you have to keep _all_ your kids away from me, in case they end up like Paige and have to move out of town.”

“Paige?” Melissa says, and then she remembers. “That wasn’t your fault, she said she knew she didn’t have her epipen. She didn’t blame you, so far as I know.”

Derek blinks. “That’s what Scott said.”

Because he’d heard it from her, she thinks, and for some reason that twists hard in her chest. When Scott had listened to her, she thinks. When they had shared with each other what had been going on in their lives.

“Anyway, I…I was a dick about it,” Derek says reluctantly. “I knew that. I went to go find him, once I realized he wasn’t talking about it, and I found out about him being a werewolf. And then Stiles found out I knew.”

“Derek, you can’t help him if he’s hurting you,” Melissa has to say.

“Well, I can’t help if Stiles is the only one he listens to either,” Derek shoots back. “So if this Chris guy actually isn’t lying—he’s trying to get himself included, I get that, but—”

They hear footsteps on the staircase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm generally 'John' Stilinski all the way, but this is sufficiently AU that 'Noah' seems more appropriate.
> 
> This entire story started with me pondering about how things might have turned out differently if Scott had latched onto Stiles as an anchor rather than Allison. The show really didn't do a ton with that concept, but you can see how it could turn into problematic leverage.


	7. Chapter 7

Stiles and Scott bring Chris back in the same shape that they took him, as far as Melissa can tell. She doesn’t get to check him over before they chain him back to the pipes, but no new injuries stand out.

“Mom’s gonna be here around four,” Stiles announces. 

“You two have school,” Melissa says, even though she knows it’s not going to do any good.

“We’re going to call in sick,” Scott says.

It’s late enough that Melissa is starting to get a headache, the tight around-the-eyes kind that’s born out of fatigue. “Is Claudia doing that for both of you?”

“Well, she’s done it before,” Stiles says.

Scott jerks sharply and looks unhappily at Stiles. It’s still more sad than angry, and Stiles mostly ignores it, choosing to stare at Melissa as if daring her to argue with him. He doesn’t even bother to wave the gun in her face, he’s that sure of himself.

“Derek,” Scott says, turning around, and Derek draws himself up, then presses back into the pipes when both Scott and Stiles start towards him.

“Wait—wait,” Melissa says, a low, desperate feeling sinking into her. “Wait, you said—you said you were _waiting_ for her—”

Stiles glances at her, just barely. She’s gone from someone to challenge to only worth a vague gesture of the gun towards her. “We’re just gonna talk to Derek. Scott’s got some questions.”

“About what?” Derek spits out. He looks at Stiles, then back at Scott. He’s trying not to look afraid, but he clearly is hoping Scott will step in. “I’m not going to—I don’t have to be anywhere. You know that, nobody’s going to notice anything till tomorrow afternoon, earliest, and—”

“It’s not that,” Scott says tightly. He’s a different kind of unhappy now, wrapping up his sadness around something meaner and nastier that keeps trying to slip out of its bonds. “Look, I just—I want to talk, and not around—”

“Then does he need to be there?” Derek says, glancing at Stiles again. “It’s not like I can take you out.”

“What else would you need to know from him?” Melissa says. She can’t just watch this. She can’t. She might not like Derek that much but he doesn’t deserve this, and he’s already—she can’t just be that person. “If you need to know about werewolves, you’ve got your expert right there. You don’t need to ask him about anything else.”

Stiles sighs. “You know, the way you’re all acting, it’s like you think we’re gonna take Derek out back and shoot him or something.”

A small noise escapes Melissa. She slaps her hand to her mouth, but it’s too late. Derek looks her way, eyes wide, no longer even trying to hide his fear, and the _help me_ in his gaze hurts like a knife to her skin.

“We’re not going to do that,” Scott says, very quietly. He’s got his hands pressed to his hips, not in fists but his fingertips are curled in. “Derek, I promise we’re not going to do that. But I just—I want to ask you something. So can you come with us for a couple minutes?”

Derek shifts his gaze to Scott. The fear doesn’t go out of his expression, but it gets…pushed down, under a layer of regret. “I can’t _stop_ you,” he says, and it’s not an accusation or a protest.

Scott doesn’t seem to hear that, from the way he relaxes and then reaches for Derek. Melissa looks at her son’s hand and then sees Derek doing the same: Scott’s nails are rounded and blunt. 

“Scotty,” Stiles says, and flips Scott a set of keys, which Scott catches without looking.

They take Derek with them, back through the hall and up the stairs. Melissa makes it to her knees and then Stiles looks at her, hard and cold, and she…doesn’t move. She curls her arms around her, till her ribs feel as if they’re going to crack, but she doesn’t do anything. Doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, just…lets them. And then Derek’s gone.

“I don’t think they’re going to kill him,” Chris says.

“If they do, it’ll be on _your_ head,” Melissa snaps. She can’t—quite put all of it together, but she feels that and she knows that it’s true. “Is this how you’re going to get through this? By throwing teenagers under the bus?”

“They need me alive anyway,” Chris grunts. He shifts position as if he’s sore. “This is how I’m trying to keep _him_ alive. If your kid gives a damn about him, then he’s going to want to handle it, he’s not going to let his friend make the call. His instincts are going to kick in.”

“Well, and then do _what_ to him?” Melissa says.

Chris looks at her. “Do you want him to survive or not?”

Melissa starts to answer, and then stops herself. It’s not even a question for him whether there’s a right or wrong way to survive, but then there’s no point in arguing with him. If he can’t see what he’s doing with them, she thinks, and then she says that under her breath. Then she gets up.

He tries to say something, once, to her back, as she walks over to the other side of the basement. But then that’s it. When she looks over her shoulder, he’s slumped back against the wall, staring at the other wall, not paying any attention to her.

* * *

Melissa thinks about going upstairs and storming into whatever is going on. Or going upstairs and trying to sneak out. Scott has his werewolf hearing, but she’s seen him distracted before, and maybe she could—

Except she knows she can’t. If she goes up there and hears or sees something, she can’t walk out, and she isn’t strong enough to stop it either. She can’t get Scott to listen to her, so it’s just going to be her, and she knows she’s not enough.

She can’t do this, she thinks dully, taking a seat against the wall and pressing her face into her knees. How could she let this happen? She thought she’d been what she could, with what she had. Nobody’s perfect, she’s only human, but she has _tried_. When it comes to being a mother, she has tried. Rafael left but she stayed and she tried and…it’s still not enough.

She can’t ever do this again. She can’t help thinking that if this all ends in death, at least she’ll be sure of that.

* * *

Derek and Scott and Stiles are upstairs longer than a couple minutes. Closer to an hour, Melissa thinks, though they took her phone so she doesn’t know for sure.

When they come back down, it’s in a rush. Scott is shoving Derek in front of him, and as they come out of the dark hallway into the slightly better-lit room, Melissa thinks she sees blood on Derek’s face. She jerks to her feet and Scott twists around, pushing Derek off his feet, eyes red and glowing, his face twisted into that of a monster’s—

“Scott, _no_ ,” Stiles hisses, almost jumping on Scott as he grabs Scott’s arm. He somehow finds time to shoot Melissa an accusing look before he turns back to Scott. “No, look, it’s just her, it’s just your mom, she can’t come at you, just calm down—”

Melissa is frozen in place. Derek scrabbles on the floor as he rights himself—that _is_ blood on his face, and down onto his shoulder—and then he twists around to look up at Scott. “You need to get back upstairs.”

“Well, no thanks to you,” Stiles snaps.

He moves towards Derek and Scott abruptly turns around. By the time he and Stiles are facing each other, Scott’s face is—is normal again, but Stiles clearly isn’t expecting the barrier between himself and Derek. Derek looks surprised too.

“He couldn’t have said anything to Peter, we caught him before he could,” Scott says sharply. “Even if he said something, he wouldn’t have known where we were going to go.”

Stiles screws up his face as if he wants to argue, and then just steps backward. “I don’t trust logic around that guy, he’s his own gravitational sink for causation, but whatever, we don’t have the time. We need to get rid of him—”

“Peter’s here?” Melissa says, finally catching on.

There’s a noise at the other end of the basement, metal on metal. Chris moving around. Stiles and Scott and Derek all glance that way, and in that moment, someone comes out of the hall.

It’s not Peter Hale, the silhouette’s all wrong. Too tall, too broad in the shoulders, with a—a _muzzle_ sticking out of its face, and Melissa opens her mouth to scream.

Scott jerks around, shifting to a werewolf again, but before he can finish, there’s a popping sound and he stumbles backwards, grabbing at his shoulder. Something’s sticking out from between his fingers, but then he sways drunkenly, his eyes rolling up, and Melissa’s not looking at that anymore.

Stiles whirls around but the thing springs out and grabs his wrist as he tries to bring the gun up. It laughs in his face, then pushes him back so that he trips over Derek and falls over. It keeps the gun.

“Kid, don’t they teach you not to play with the grown-up’s toys?” it says in a woman’s voice.

And then it slims down, shortens, changes dark fur for blonde hair, and as Stiles glares up in nervy defiance, a woman around Melissa’s age stands there smirking at him. 

“Then again, with _your_ mother, I’m not surprised,” the woman says dryly.

Something about her voice makes Melissa—and then Chris makes a long, strangled noise. He is staring at the woman, and for the first time he looks afraid.

“Kate,” he says.

“Big brother,” Kate says. “There you are. You know how hard I’ve been looking for you?”

Scott collapses.

* * *

Melissa had run for her son as soon as she saw his knees buckle, and then something had happened. She doesn’t know what—

When she wakes, everything hurts. She moves her head and the world seems to fracture into so many glass slivers that dig into her all over her body. Her forehead is pressing against the floor and she needs that support to keep her head in place, is what she feels like, but at the same time, it feels like the floor is trying to come up through her skull.

She does remember what happened. It’s etched in her till she dies, she thinks: Scott, eyes rolled back, dropping like the dead to the ground. It’s another couple seconds before she can even lift her head but she can feel tears streaming down her cheeks. Her son, her baby, and he died thinking she…

“Goddamn it, Chris,” snarls someone barely human. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You’re my _sister_ ,” says someone else, barely coherent. They sound as if they’re on the verge of breaking down. “You can’t—even if you _hate_ her, Kate, you can’t—you can’t do this.”

Melissa lifts her head and someone much closer to her sucks his breath. “No, stay down,” Derek hisses. 

She can’t do that, she thinks. Her son is dead, and that—that bitch, she shot him. She has to get up.

She lifts her head. She’s over by the wall, crumpled, and the more she moves, the more she realizes that was the least painful position for her. Her ribs hurt, her left hip to knee doesn’t want to flex, and she can feel the basement air picking at something sticky on the side of her face but she doesn’t want to reach up and touch it and find out what that is.

Derek is next to her, still cuffed, and so is—“ _Scott_ ,” Melissa breathes.

Her son is lying next to Derek. He’s still and pale but she can see his chest moving.

“Keep it down,” Derek whispers. He glances at Melissa, then stares at the other end of the basement. His hands are holding onto Scott’s shoulder. “She said she’d come back for him.”

Melissa starts to ask what that means, then shuts her mouth as Chris, moaning ‘no’ over and over again, is almost drowned out by a series of snarls and growls and clanking noises. She can’t see what’s going on but Derek can and he grimaces and turns away; he’s almost as pale as Scott.

“He’s just out right now but she said she was going to come back and power up when she was done with him,” Derek mutters. He stares at Scott’s ear without really seeming to see it, swallowing hard.

“Is it just her?” Melissa mutters back. This Kate sounds busy, whatever she’s doing.

Derek nods. Then, as she drags herself over by one arm, his head goes up and he opens his mouth as if to warn against something.

It’s too late. She looks past Scott’s head and sees Stiles’ open, staring eyes. There’s an unholy racket going on now, and Chris is all but screaming, but Melissa can’t—

She knew Stiles. She wasn’t ever going to forgive what Stiles had done to Scott, but she knew him. She remembers him, before this, back when his father wasn’t in the long-term care ward and they were all _good_ friends, and for a moment she can’t _not_ look at him.

Then the noise suddenly goes away. It startles her, and she looks up, past Stiles’ wrenched-around body, and sees the back of a naked woman in the middle of standing up. Just from the way the hands move, Melissa can tell she’s disgusted.

“Goddamn it, Chris, I need _one_ thing from you,” Kate says, dragging one bloody hand against her hip.

“You’re my _sister_ ,” Chris repeats, breathless with hysteria. “What do you expect?”

“Well, for you to be a man for once. But I guess our mother killed that in you too,” Kate spits back as she looks down at him. He’s naked, sprawled out between her legs, though Melissa can see he’s trying to pull his feet in towards himself.

Casual as anything, Kate reaches down and grabs his ankle and pulls it back towards her. Shifts to a squat as she does, her other hand lifting, and suddenly Melissa understands why Derek is so pale.

“One thing,” Kate grumbles. “One goddamn thing, the only thing I need from this damn family and then I can just get going and—”

“I _can’t_ ,” Chris says. He almost sounds as if he’s giggling, his voice is so jerky. “And you can’t—you can’t take the family away like this, why would you even, you can’t. You’re already thrown out, you can’t—if you have one, it doesn’t—”

“Well, they’re not going to kill it if it’s half you,” Kate snaps back. “If it’s the _only_ one of yours out there. Mom doesn’t have any other kids and Bridget let her eggs shrivel up years ago.”

Chris makes a low, broken noise. It doesn’t seem as if he’s moved, but Kate suddenly sits back and Melissa can see her slapping her empty hands against her thighs in frustration. She squats there, stewing.

All the way over there. Melissa looks down at Scott, then over at the open stretch between them and the stairs.

“Stiles,” Derek says. Then, when she looks at him, he presses his lips together. He looks as if someone has carved ten years off his face, with his huge, haunted eyes, and as if the ten years have been shoved right back under his skin, with his gaunt angles. “That’s what happened when he—”

Kate abruptly rises and turns and walks towards them. Her eyes flick over to them, then away, even though Melissa’s visceral repulsion has her up and pressed against the wall before her body’s pains can register. She keeps going around the corner, then upstairs.

The rest of them are breathing. Chris the hardest, but Derek and Melissa aren’t too much calmer, for all that they’ve just been sitting back. Derek saw all of it, Melissa thinks.

“What about his mother?” Melissa asks.

Derek doesn’t immediately seem to hear her. Then his shoulders jerk. “What?”

“His mo—Claudia. She was supposed to come,” Melissa says. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know,” Derek says. He bites his lip. “But even if she does, she doesn’t know—I don’t even know what that is, she doesn’t act like Scott. She doesn’t _look_ like Scott does when he’s changed.”

Melissa pushes herself off the wall. Her leg is killing her, but she can still move on it; she hasn’t broken bones or dislocated anything. She’s not so sure about her ribs, but—she needs to get out of this basement. She and Scott. “Can you walk?”

“Yeah, but—” Derek glances at Stiles’ body.

“We’re going to be dead at some point, so do you want to do it sitting here?” Melissa asks.

“There’s only one way out, and what are we supposed to use against her?” Derek hisses back.

Melissa looks around the basement. It’s empty of anything useful, except for maybe in the office, but that still looks locked. Then she frowns, and pushes herself around till she can reach Stiles. She winces as her hand passes over his eyes, but she’s touched dead bodies before. And his keys are in his pocket.

She checks, but doesn’t find any weapons. Still, the keys…she flips through them with her fingers and one key, shorter than the rest, slips through to clink against the ring. She pinches it and brings it around, and Derek sucks his breath as they realize the same thing at the same time.

They get Derek’s cuffs unlocked just in time to hear steps on the staircase. “Put your hands behind him,” Melissa mutters, pushing Derek’s arms down.

At the same time she sticks the keys under Scott’s shoulder. Then Kate reappears, with a limp body slung over one shoulder. Derek flinches and Kate smiles viciously, absently at him as she continues on towards Chris. When she gets there, she pulls the body roughly to the ground and it groans and starts to stir.

Peter Hale. Kate stands back, hands propped on her thighs, and waits till Peter seems just aware enough to notice her.

“Peter, she’s a—” Derek suddenly bursts out.

It gets Peter’s attention and he starts to turn and Kate’s arm darts out. His eyes pop open and he gasps, clutching at the hand she has wrapped around his throat. “You fucked my brother, I can smell it on you,” Kate says. “Don’t argue, just get him up and maybe I’ll just bite you and what’s his name there instead of killing you.”

“He doesn’t know what werewolves are!” Derek shouts.

Kate looks annoyed. Then shrugs. “Well, here’s the crash course: _I’m_ one, and I can kill you. Now you know.”

Then she throws Peter at Chris. “Kate, no,” Chris moans.

“Derek,” Melissa says at the same time.

He doesn’t look at her. He’s staring in horror as Peter struggles up onto his arms, breathing hard, only for Kate to nearly shove him into the floor as she pushes him another foot towards Chris. Peter’s clothes shred under Kate’s hand so her fingers trail bloody ribbons as she stands back.

She can’t just leave them, Melissa thinks. Or is it _can she leave them_? Her hands are already voting, curling themselves around Scott, getting hold of him under his arms. She drags both legs under herself to get as much of a push as she can. She’s not looking anymore. She knows it’s going on, but she needs to get out.

Peter’s talking, and then Kate lets out a snarl and Peter and Chris’ panicked voices are wiping each other out, and it’s _now_.

Melissa surges to her feet. Even the sudden drag of Scott’s weight against her arms doesn’t slow her down. The energy just comes out of nowhere and she rides it and she can see the space eating up between her and the hallway, can see that she’s going to make it—

“No!” comes a shout from behind her. Derek.

And she turns. She can’t help it, she knows it’s the wrong thing to do but her feet move before she can help herself and she turns and Scott slips from her arms to pin her legs, and this monster is there in front of her. Huge and broad-shouldered and hairy, with shining teeth and claws, and she thinks: _not her son, not this time._

She doesn’t run. Not without Scott, and if that means she dies—

Talia Hale and another woman step out of the hallway behind Melissa, and the second woman throws a hatchet into the middle of Kate’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...yeah. Tags. And I don't offer spoilers ahead of time, but I have plans for the Stilinskis and a lot more chapters written.


	8. Chapter 8

“We’re going to have to watch them to make sure they don’t turn. My niece wasn’t your standard werewolf, and they’re both covered in scratches,” says Bridget Argent, when Talia and she are sitting in the hospital waiting area.

It’s a rare moment in between the doctors and the police officers and the random gawkers who, somehow, despite the setting and the very early morning timeframe, are still present. Oh, all of those groups are still around and some of them are even within Talia’s sight, but they’re all talking to each other. Probably about her and her family.

“You need to listen to me,” Bridget says.

Talia presses herself back into her seat. She is tired, she thinks. “I thought I did that when you broke into my home to insist that if I didn’t follow you immediately, my son and brother were going to die.”

At least she knows where both of them are now. God knows what shape they’re in, but she knows where they are. That’s half her family. The other half…Laura won’t even be awake yet, she’s always been a late riser, but Cora’s up early for lacrosse practice and she’s going to wonder about Talia not being there for breakfast. She might not worry—not immediately, she might think it’s just a work meeting, but she’ll ask about it later.

“Well, I’m glad that you’re not so shocked you don’t have a sense of humor,” Bridget says after a long pause. On the surface level she sounds a little impressed, but Talia’s instinct for reading people hasn’t disappeared and under that the woman is anything but. “You’re going to have to hold onto that tight if you want your family to get through this.”

“Really?” Talia says, mind still half on her girls. Then her son, because she can’t remember whether this is one of the days Derek usually drives Cora over to school. Of course that’s not an actual arrangement, that’s just Cora’s sheer persistence pitted against Derek’s tendency to wish obstacles away instead of taking action to avoid them. But again, if Derek doesn’t show up at some point, Cora will wonder.

Bridget exhales. It’s long and pointed, and when Talia finally looks over at her, it’s a mild surprise to find that the woman doesn’t have a cigarette or something else in hand to demonstrate how utterly, irritatingly run-of-the-mill this is for her. Not even worth taking a moment away from her other needs to explain it.

“Then again, if you don’t want to hear it, I have other things to get done. Need to check my own—” Bridget points with her chin rather than either, empty, hand down the hall “—and then that.”

She does make a gesture with her hand at that point, an odd crossing and then twisting of the fingers, as she indicates the morgue at the other end of the building. “You said that was your niece,” Talia says.

“The key word there is _was_ ,” Bridget says. Her lip curls, and then she smooths back her iron-grey hair, even though not a hair has fallen out of place from her ponytail. “So you want to hear it?”

This is, Talia thinks, one of those moments that will shape how everything will be. It’s always the quiet times—people who don’t know very much about her family think that everything about them is dramatic, and to be fair to them, this is accurate to what they see. Her family’s been responsible for more than enough public scenes, and while you can pay to keep them out of the record, you can’t pay to keep them out of people’s memories. 

But the scenes have always come much, much later. They’re the end of the road, not the fork at the beginning.

And this is one of them. She tilts her head against the wall, looking at the speckled black-on-white tiles that make up the ceiling, and she thinks that if she closed her eyes and turned away just for a moment, this Bridget woman would disappear. She doesn’t get the sense that Bridget is staying to talk out of any real sense of concern for _them_. This is something else to her, something impersonal, and if it can be impersonal, then the exact person is not actually critical. So if she turns away, then no one will see that her family matters.

“Yes,” Talia says, turning towards Bridget. Then, as the other woman’s eyes shift from expectation to something else, Talia holds her hand up. Pauses, then lifts it further, to signal one of the doctors who sits on a nonprofit board with her. “Not here. I need five minutes to get us somewhere private.”

Bridget nods, a fleck of respect entering her eyes, and sits back as Talia stands up. Because Talia has always stood up, when it’s come to that. If her family is the issue, she stands. It’s not even a question.

* * *

“This is going to be difficult to understand, but you need to, so if you stop following me—” Bridget says.

“This is going to be the easy part,” Talia says. She watches the way skepticism bleeds into something warier in Bridget’s eyes. This is not a woman who assumes what she sees is what she will get. “All I have to do is listen to you talk, and I am listening. So tell me.”

They talk about werewolves. What they are, what they can and can’t do, how people become them. Not why, they’re focusing on the practical side. What werewolves need. What can hurt them, keep them at bay, kill them. _Who_ will come to kill them, and here Bridget speaks with unfussy pride about her family’s approach to it.

“We don’t strike first,” she says. “That’s our Code. We do not strike unless it is necessary to save someone else. We do not do this because we enjoy it, we do it because someone needs to.”

“So my son and my brother,” Talia says. “You’re going to watch them to see if they need it.”

Bridget’s gaze doesn’t waver from Talia. “Yeah. Same as with my niece. I’m just sorry it took us so long.”

There are a thousand things Talia could ask here. How long do they watch, who watches. Who _judges_. But this is the easy part, and so she keeps those questions at bay, and asks other ones, ones about how she needs to look after her family. What they’ll need to do to keep people who aren’t already in the know from finding out, since there will be enough to deal with.

“I need to get Kate’s body out of there to make sure,” Bridget says.

“Do we need to talk about zombies?” Talia says.

“I wish,” Bridget says, alongside a bark of bitter laughter. “If that’s all she could come back as—anyway, you and I both need to get our people to somewhere they can wait out the full moon. And I need to think about what to do about that kid.”

It takes a moment for Talia to realize she’s referring to the McCall boy. “He has a mother,” she says.

“She’s a mess,” Bridget says dismissively. “You saw her, screaming at everyone not to touch her son till they let her ride in the same ambulance. She’s not in any shape to make any decisions, even if she knows.”

Talia had, and she hadn’t considered that a mess. She knows Melissa—less so after the woman’s divorce, since to be honest, a single nurse is not as important to have on your contacts list as the wife of a local FBI agent—and she is positive that Melissa knows her son is a werewolf. Melissa hadn’t been screaming at random, and as soon as she’d gotten an EMT who recognized her, she’d calmed down.

She’d also been watching Derek, and he’d been reluctant to let Scott be taken on a stretcher, even though he’d kept himself from saying anything. And she’s been watching Talia with an angry twist to her mouth, the few times they’ve encountered each other in the last few months. Mostly coincidental run-ins, crossing paths at the grocery store or at school events, but Talia had remembered. Hadn’t thought much of it at the time, since none of her children had reacted to it and Peter hadn’t raised anything either, and a lot of people in this town don’t like them. But now that she thinks about…

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to not include her,” Talia says. She rubs between her eyebrows as if she has a headache—and she does, the thin needling start of one, but she also wants to watch Bridget when the woman thinks she’s not entirely in Talia’s field of vision. “She’s a nurse here, she knows most of the medical staff—”

“I know. We have a visiting doctor who’s handling things,” Bridget says.

Talia digs her nails into either side of the bridge of her nose, warning herself, and then allows the surprise to bloom on her face as she looks up.

“My family’s been doing this for a long time.” Bridget shrugs as if to fend off an oncoming comment. “We know how to take care of the aftermath.”

“You know about her husband,” Talia says after a moment.

Bridget nods. Her eyes flick to the side, as if she’s contemplating something else that needs to be done, and then move back to Talia. “We need to move people out of here. The mother can come, if we can talk her into not being difficult about it. We just don’t need any more attention.”

“I think if you make her understand that this is in the best interest of her son, then she will. Melissa’s divorce wasn’t easy on her, and she’s devoted herself to Scott ever since. It’s very clear what her priorities are,” Talia says. She shifts in her seat. It’s not a spindly metal chair but the cushioning is unwilling to give, and her thighs are going numb. “Or I could speak to her. My youngest is in the same grade as Scott, we know each other.”

“It usually is better coming from someone closer to them. I’m some wild woman from out of town with strange stories and too many weapons,” Bridget says with a nod. She doesn’t put any real self-deprecation or humor into her words, just a matter-of-factness that verges on cold. “I have some rentals scouted out on the edge of town—”

Talia stiffens before she can help herself. She sees that it’s noted and decides to lean into the reaction, taking a moment to breathe in and then to look back up at Bridget. “I have a house next to the preserve. A very large house.”

“The one you use to run haunted tours?” Bridget says.

“People are used to strange things around it, especially at this time of year, and we only use the first floor and the basement,” Talia says. “The upper floor has more than enough room, and the walls are solid. They predate the days of drywall. And if we have to, we can shut down the tours for a few days. People will expect that anyway, knowing us. We’re a close family.”

Bridget’s eyes narrow. She thinks that it is a good idea, but also she finds something problematic in the fact that Talia is coming up with it. Talia assumes that she’s looked into the Hale family history, given what else she seems to know, and meets the woman’s silent examination without flinching.

“I will do whatever is necessary to look after my family,” Talia tells her.

“I see,” Bridget says after a long moment. “That will work if my team brings them over.”

Talia doesn’t recall seeing others, and just catches herself from looking around. “I thought we were trying to keep this lowkey.”

“We are. But we need to be safe too, and you can’t just drive people home from something like this,” Bridget says. She regards Talia for a moment. Her gaze doesn’t exactly soften, but she seems to think she understands. “Our Code is to not kill unless it’s proven that is the only reasonable solution. Nobody is going to die on the way over. But that’s why my team needs to do it.”

“This is my family we’re speaking about,” Talia says. She presses her lips together, and then picks up her purse. “We’ll get ourselves over, but if you want to follow us, I’m not going to stop you.”

“Be ready by noon,” Bridget says, getting up first. She’d been expecting this and it landed exactly where she thought it would, is what that means.

Talia watches the woman walk down the hall, then turn the corner in the opposite direction as the exit. There’s a small alcove with several vending machines and that’s where Bridget heads. The woman chooses one and punches at its buttons, then digs into a pocket to sort through her bills like any other tired, worried family member. She’s not in any hurry.

And this was the easy part, Talia thinks as she gets to her feet and turns away from the other woman. This was the easy part.


	9. Chapter 9

_Cancel everything for today, I’ll call later to explain,_ Talia texts her daughters. _Do not talk about it. Any problems, call my assistant. Do not call Derek or Peter before I talk to you._

Laura isn’t up yet and doesn’t answer; Cora is up and Talia sees the incoming-message alert as she’s putting on her lock screen, but she tucks her phone into her purse without reading it. The doctors are showing her into the room where Derek, looking two sizes too small for the breadth of his shoulders, is hunched into the corner of a bed.

They told her outside in the hall that he has question-raising injuries in the groin region, and that the psychologist as well as the lead investigator want him screened for certain types of trauma. She told them she’s already called her lawyers, and then had herself escorted into the room. They will leave him alone with her but they won’t close the door.

“Derek,” she says, as softly as she can. “Derek, that was a werewolf we killed.”

Her son’s head shoots up. He’s relieved and terrified at the same time, white-faced at the idea that she knows even a little bit of what’s going on, and in that moment she knows that all the worst ideas they have about what happened to him are true. 

“Are there others?” she asks.

His eyes flick to the door. Then he puts his hands down on the bed and pushes himself to the edge closest to her. The railing is down on that side and he lets his legs hang over as she walks up to him. She wants to reach out and gather him to her and hold him forever, but she doesn’t; this is not what he wants, she can tell, and also, this is not what will make him safe.

“I know about Scott, too,” she says.

Derek flinches. “It wasn’t him,” he mutters. His eyes drop to the floor. He starts running his hand through his hair over and over again. “He’s one but it wasn’t—Stiles and his mom, they were talking to that—that one, the dead one, and—shit. His _mom_. Mom, Stiles is dead, did you—and when his mother finds out—”

“She is not going to blame you,” Talia says, with cold certainty.

She knows Claudia Stilinski too. Better than Melissa McCall, with how Claudia has been trying every possible avenue to get someone to pay for her husband’s coma—not in money, she would’ve stopped before this if it’d been only that—and for the slow unraveling of her family that followed it. She doesn’t know where Claudia is right now, but she knows what that woman is going to do when she finds out about her only precious son. 

For a second Derek seems as if he wants to ask Talia something, maybe how she can be so sure, but then he shifts back and just looks at her. He’s always been the quietest of her three; his lack of chatter hasn’t always translated into more forethought, but right now she thinks that that might be it.

“We’ll talk about that, and about what else happened later,” Talia says. “But right now, we need to make sure that we can talk about it. So Derek, I need to know why you were there. You don’t have to tell me everything, just who—”

“Mom, you can’t fix this by putting it on someone else,” Derek says abruptly. Low, barely audible, but the conviction behind it is unmistakable. His eyes drop to the ground again. “It’s too complicated for that. I know you’re going to try and just get us out of it but you can’t. You can’t get me out of this one.”

“I can’t understand what this is unless you can tell me,” Talia says as gently as she can. “You’re my son, Derek. No matter what happens, I’m going to take care of you. But I need to know what we’re dealing with.”

She reaches for him without thinking. He’s never been a great liar, her son. He’s grown aware of that over the years and has learned to manage around it with his physical size and his attitude. It’s more effective than Peter gives him credit for, but she’s his mother and she’s never going to be intimidated by him, and she thinks if she can just have him look at her—

Her fingers barely brush his shoulder and he jerks away. His head goes up, then down, and then he forces it back up. “Sorry,” he mutters, and reaches mechanically for her hand.

Talia moves it away. “You don’t have to, Derek,” she manages after a second, when the fury has iced over for later. “It’s fine. We can talk later.”

His eyes widen. “Mom,” he says, half a gulped plea, half a snarled protest. “Mom, look, I’m—sorry. I didn’t mean to make you…”

“Oh, darling, you never made me do anything,” Talia says, smiling at him.

Then she turns to the nurse who’s stepped into the doorway, and asks to be taken to her brother.

Peter is awake but too sedated to do more than mutter and move his fingertips over her hand when she comes up to his bedside. The X-rays are back and they don’t think his skull was actually cracked, but they want to keep him for observation for any brain bleeds. She explains that to him, and watches the frantic flickering under that hazed-over look die out of his eyes.

Then she explains that they want to screen him when he’s more conscious for the same kind of trauma as Derek, because of the way he was partly-undressed and some of the things that Chris Argent had said. The drugs don’t keep him from convulsively clamping his fingers around her wrist.

“We’re going to leave before that. I’ve already called Jason,” she tells him, referring to their main lawyer. She unlocks her jaw once his grip loosens to the point that feeling returns and her wrist starts to hurt. “Peter, I’m going to need to work with Chris’ family. They’re here, and they know more than we do.”

He stares up at her. She can see his mind struggling to follow all the things she knows he’s hearing in her voice.

“I need you to tell me if you knew about Derek,” she says.

Peter’s eyes narrow. Contempt, she thinks, and she smiles at the sight of his personality forcing its way up through the drugs.

“And if you knew about Chris,” she adds.

This time he hesitates. He didn’t, she thinks, but Peter never wants to admit when he’s been taken in, even if it’s to his benefit. She starts to tell him so and his eyes close, and his fingers slide limply off her arm.

Talia stays a little longer at his side. Not because she loves him more than Derek, but because…she’s had Peter for longer. Her children are still strange, unexpected people to her, growing in ways she can’t quite see in herself or in her ex-husband. But Peter she knows, whether or not either of them like it. And he knows that too.

He wouldn’t disapprove of the way she’s thinking. If anything, he’d be the one to tell her it’s about time. So it is strange for him to want to not join in. He hasn’t known this Chris Argent for that long, whatever they’ve been up to together: Bridget had been very clear that Chris has been in town less than a week, and that they’d known nothing about Beacon Hills before this.

If she let herself, Talia would be frustrated. But if she is frustrated, she is not thinking her way through this, and right now she is the only one in her family who can. Her son and her brother are hurt, and even before making sure they recover, she has to make sure that they are never hurt like this again.

* * *

“Talia,” Melissa says when Talia comes into the room.

Melissa and Scott are in what looks like should be a single room, but a second bed’s been crammed into it. Scott is in the bed that looks as if it belongs, while the other has nothing but rumpled sheets. Instead Melissa’s taken the chair next to Scott’s bed, facing the door, her bruised and battered face an entryway sight everyone has to confront first.

“I have my lawyers outside,” Talia says, and closes the door behind her.

A flash of fear crosses Melissa’s face, but it’s only a flash. What comes after gives Talia a second of pause: a long, unblinking look that is neither contemptuous nor hunted, but simply…as if she understands what Talia is intending, and sees too that this is the only reasonable way to achieve both of their goals.

Talia doesn’t believe that they have the same goals. She believes that their goals dovetail sufficiently that it should not require blackmail or anything similar to persuade Melissa, but they are not identical. So she pauses.

“My ex is going to get notified,” Melissa says after a moment. She has an empty sling hanging from her neck, with her heavily-bandaged hands instead resting in her lap. “I think he might at least call. Not that he cares so much but this is the kind of thing that’ll make him curious.”

“Do you want to reach out to him first?” Talia says, after her own moment of thought.

Melissa moves slightly back in her seat. It’s not a retreat. “Your son’s got a crush on my son. Or—something like that.”

Derek’s had a growing interest in other men. They haven’t really talked about it, aside from once when Peter’s temper had snapped after yet another trip to the police station and he’d taken Derek out for a long lecture about not poisoning the local pool. Talia had asked Derek afterward if he wanted to talk to anyone else, and Derek had just looked at her as if he’d rather chew off his own foot. But he’s always been like that, not wanting to talk up front when he can get what he needs to know from resources she’d positioned for him to find without her. She’d assumed she’d have time for the same thing, and had let it go.

She doesn’t like to smother her children. She’s been smothered. And this is always worked—till now. “Does your son reciprocate?” Talia asks.

The expression in Melissa’s eyes grows a little wary. She searches Talia’s face, clearly not trusting in the simplicity of Talia’s reaction. “My son’s only been eighteen for three months.”

“I think, Melissa, that age isn’t that relevant to our problems now,” Talia says, her temper finally reaching its straining point. Then she pulls herself back and takes a breath, and looks the other woman in the eye. “This is not going to let us go our own ways and take care of things. We’re going to have to be together, at least for a little while, and if that’s the case, I want to know what that might do. What kind of dam—”

She stops. Melissa’s eyes flicker, and then her mouth twists. But when she speaks again, her tone is unexpectedly even. “I don’t think Scott has any idea what he cares about. His head’s so twisted up right now, I think he’s so confused, and—look, I don’t think he hates Derek. I think he wishes Derek hadn’t gotten involved. But I don’t—” her voice breaks “—I don’t know if he’s going to keep himself from _hurting_ …I don’t know. I mean, Stiles is dead, but…”

“I’m going to handle his mother,” Talia says.

That draws an odd smile from Melissa, too sharp to be merely disbelieving. “I’m glad someone is trying to.”

“Is she a werewolf?” Talia asks.

“I have no idea what—or who that woman is these days,” Melissa says. She starts to say something else, and then draws a ragged breath. She picks at some of the bandages on her hands. “Look, if you can keep her away from my son—”

“I’ll do that if you help me understand what happened to my son,” Talia says.

Melissa flinches. She pushes herself back in her seat as if she means to get to her feet, and then stops, pressed against the chair, looking up at Talia. She looks like a cornered, wounded animal—one with claws.

No, Talia corrects herself. Not an animal. That isn’t an animal’s mind that’s sizing her up.

“I want to get Scott out of this,” Melissa finally says. “I’m sorry about your son. I don’t think he deserved it, and I hope she doesn’t get him either.”

“Then I think we have some common ground,” Talia says. “I’m having my lawyers work on getting everyone released from the hospital. Chris’ aunt—”

Melissa shifts in her seat. Then slouches back. “They have to come along, huh.”

“I want to talk to them about what happened to my brother,” Talia says. “They know more than either of us do.”

“Yeah. That’s true,” Melissa says flatly. “So they’re staying.”

“While we all talk. I’m going to open up the top floor of the old house.” Talia waits and when the other woman doesn’t react, she wonders if the shock is finally catching up to her. “Our old house, the—”

“I know where you’re talking about,” Melissa says, still using that flat, distant tone. “Okay. That’s in the woods. It’s a full moon tonight and Scott will need—”

“We’ll get whatever Scott needs,” Talia tells her. When Melissa looks up, Talia takes two steps forward, then leans towards the other woman so that their heads are nearly level. “I want to know what happened to my son, and how he can get over it, Melissa. Nothing is going to happen to your son, or you, so long as either of you can help with that.”

That flicker goes through Melissa’s eyes again, that strange, almost cold knowing. “Okay. Okay, I think I understand you. So…what do you need from us?”

Talia smiles, and steps back to open the doors for the lawyers.

* * *

It’s not so hard to get them out of the hospital, once Talia convinces the police that no one is leaving town. None of the injuries are severe enough to _require_ hospitalization, and while the medical staff are strongly recommending supervised observation, it’s not as if they have any authority to detain people. 

Getting them to the old house takes a little more juggling. Bridget keeps warning Talia that no matter what they look like, with werewolves you have to expect them to be much stronger. She offers again to lend her team to help with transport but Talia’s applying that same advice to them, and isn’t about to turn either family or people who her family might need over unless she knows she can get them back. And since she unfortunately doesn’t have mercenaries on speed-dial, that means using her own family.

She tells her daughters very little, except that they will keep their curiosity to themselves and will keep others out of it. Cora’s at the age where she’s sullen and belligerent, but when Talia mentions that the McCalls will be their guests, Cora goes pale. 

“So when’s Stiles coming?” she demands, as if volume will cover up her face.

“Stiles is dead,” Talia says, and watches her daughters.

Laura sucks her breath, and then grabs at Cora’s shoulder before the other girl can speak. “Shut up, Mom’s right,” Laura says. She’s afraid. “Have you seen his mother yet?”

“I’m dealing with her,” Talia says.

“Good, because she’s worse than him,” Cora mutters. She twists out from her sister’s grip, but lingers near them. “Did Derek do it?”

“Cora,” Laura snaps. “It doesn’t matter—”

“I’m just saying if he did, then he did everyone a fa—”

“He didn’t. But Claudia’s not going to care, and I need to deal with her so I need you two to look after Derek and Peter,” Talia says, slowly and calmly. “Everyone needs to stay together.”

Cora nods carelessly, but she’s watching Talia back behind her messy hair. “Derek’s been hanging out with Scott a lot,” she says, as if waiting for her words to crisp up over a flame. “They know each other. He didn’t want anyone to—”

Laura grabs her again, and this time doesn’t let go till she’s pushed Cora out of the room with an order to get some bags packed with things Derek’ll need. She and Derek have always been closer, even though Derek’s a little closer to Cora in age. Talia thinks it’s because Derek doesn’t run when Laura tries to smother him, even if he resents it.

“She’s such a little bitch sometimes,” Laura mutters, and then she inhales sharply. She turns and looks at Talia. Trying to be brave, to be the one who stands up. “Mom, you’re not going to—”

“Derek is part of this family, and whatever else we do, we take care of each other,” Talia says, looking her in the eye. “You know that. I’ve told you all that, you are _my_ children. Period.”

That comes first, always, and Talia honestly cannot remember a time when she did not feel that in herself. She’s never seen why she should think otherwise, or wondered what it would be like to think otherwise, despite her ex-husband’s escalations. It had hurt his pride, she thinks—that she hadn’t cared what he thought. More so than the uncertainty of whether her children were also his.

And it’s irrelevant. There isn’t anything of him in Laura’s face, nervous as she is. “We’re going to talk about what happened at some point, right? Because if the McCalls and the Stilinskis—and these random other people, what’s their name—”

“The Argents,” Talia says patiently.

“I just—I need to know what’s going on. I can’t help if I don’t,” Laura says, a little earnestness breaking into her voice. “And if Peter’s knocked out you’re going to need it.”

“We don’t have time right now. We need to get everyone to our house, and then we can think,” Talia says.

It’s not a lie, but it’s not a promise either. But her daughter, striving but inexperienced, accepts it as comfort. “Okay,” she says. She puts her hands into her hair and musses it, thinking. “Okay, I’ll deal with Cora. I’ll go swing by Peter’s place too—”

Talia shakes her head. “No, I’ll do that. I have to meet someone there anyway, and then I’ll see you all at the house. I promise.”

Laura looks up, and she _wants_ to believe in her mother. That’s enough.

* * *

Peter looks up at Talia, and he doesn’t believe her, even with the haze of the drugs in his system, but he lets her sit down next to him on the second-floor balcony of the old house. The side of his mouth quirks when she pushes the bag towards his feet.

“They’re going to start thinking we’re putting dummies on the roof again,” Talia points out.

He shrugs. “If we’re going to keep up this charade, setting expectations may work in our favor.”

“The tours don’t need dressing-up, they just need enough staff to not be scared off, and no one in their right mind is going to storm a houseful of small children,” Talia says.

“No one in their right mind would have that many people around some soon-to-be monsters,” Peter retorts.

Talia raises her brow, and Peter opens his mouth. Then pauses, his brow wrinkling. His hand drops from his knee towards his side, then rises. Then, with purposefulness verging on violence, he grimaces his way around grabbing at the blanket tucked around him and adjusting his position. They’re on the shaded side of the house, but his head pokes forward enough that the light picks out the artificial sheen of skin-glue on his face.

“I happen to think that she’s right,” Peter says when he’s settled himself again. “The Argent woman.”

“Her name’s Bridget,” Talia says.

Peter knows what her name is, and he knows why Talia’s pointing it out to him, but he merely shrugs. “Human shields are only good when they’re alive, Talia. The McCall boy can’t control himself, we already know that, and Chris is clearly isn’t in any mental shape to consider his options—”

“I actually thought he articulated his arguments very well,” Talia says.

“He’s not going to kill himself,” Peter mutters, and then shoots her a look.

He’s angry with himself for that, more so than he is for letting the comment slip. The drugs are making him loose and slow, and he’s just out from under them enough to know they are, and he’s furious with that too.

“Peter,” Talia starts.

“For God’s sake, he was interesting. He wasn’t a damn—” Peter bites off the rest of what he’d been about to say, and then tips his head back to look down at her. “I don’t care if he kills himself, except that I was seen with him and you know how that’s going to play out with people here. I only started with him because I _thought_ he was interested in _your_ son.”

“I know,” Talia says. Then she puts her brother out of his misery. “Bridget Argent recovered a phone from her niece’s body. It had messages on it between this Kate and Claudia Stilinski that outlined everything. Kate was practically narrating it, down to smelling Chris on you—”

Peter sneers, which is his way of trying to dissociate.

“—and it only matters because if you’re all werewolves now, then you’ve all been turned by the same person and this matters,” Talia says. She pauses. “According to Bridget.”

“And Chris,” Peter says.

Talia raises her brows. “You’ve talked?”

“He tried to talk me into getting him something to kill himself with, before they sedated him,” Peter says. He glances at her, then busies himself with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “And Derek. We need to keep them apart, this McCall boy’s bad enough.”

Talia hasn’t seen her son since the hospital. She desperately wants to, but the part of her that knows her family needs to survive knows that that is not the priority right now.

Peter knows she wants to. He meant to needle her, but he only leaves her stinging for a moment. “Derek’s convinced that now that Stiles is dead, Scott’s in danger of losing his mind and we have to replace whatever—whatever Stiles did to the boy to stop that from happening. I don’t think you can change his mind on this, Talia.”

“Do I want to?” Talia asks.

She means for it to come out as a question. Her brother gives her a look with almost his usual sharpness, even through the drugs. Then he frowns. He leans back against the wall again, staring at her, and now she can see him struggling to follow her thoughts.

“He’s going to do something stupid—more stupid—either way. It’s what you want him to do that for,” Peter finally says.

“He’s my son. You know the answer to that,” Talia tells him.

For a moment she thinks Peter’s going to argue with her, and then he instead turns away. He stares out into the preserve.

“What do you want?” Talia asks, and he looks back at her. She drops her gaze, an irrational urge to smile passing through her. She crushes it. “You’re my brother.”

“Then you should know the answer to that,” Peter says sharply. He starts to push himself against the wall, and she thinks he’s going to get up, except he goes white in the face and stiffens in place, his eyes suddenly unfocused.

Talia reaches for him and has her hand on his chest when his good hand closes around her wrist. His eyes snap to her face and they are so—so wild, she doesn’t know him for a moment. Peter has a temper, and he’s not afraid to unleash it, but he rarely ever loses himself. When he’s a rage, he’s still very much _Peter_.

The thing staring back at her through his eyes is not even human, she thinks, and as she thinks she’s jerking her body around to face him. He registers that and his brows pinch, and her brother is back.

“They think you’re going to turn,” she whispers. “I can’t keep them out of the woods, just the house.”

“Oh, good God, are we in an action movie with snipers now?” Peter mutters back. He’s still ashen, and his eyes dart over her shoulder before returning to her. “I need my damn pain medication, not—”

“It’s your headphones, not your liquor,” Talia says. She eases herself back onto one knee, then reaches around without lowering herself to retrieve the bag. “We canceled the tours just for today, but I’m doing this day by day, and you know how loud they can get, even if you’re not a werewolf.”

Peter’s mouth twitches as she puts the bag in his lap. He drops her wrist, pokes at it, and then sighs and picks it up. Then holds his arm out, crooked, till she pushes off again and slides her hand under his shoulder to help him stand. 

“Did they give you a gun?” he grunts.

“A taser,” she tells him. 

He grunts again, and then shuffles indoors with her. Once they’ve crossed the threshold, she stops to shut the door behind them. Then she turns back, only to catch Peter staring outside again. She thinks he’s looking for Bridget’s people, but then realizes his head is angled too low for that. She looks back at the balcony itself, but doesn’t see anything that they’ve left.

Peter suddenly shakes himself, white around the lips, and shifts towards the nearest piece of furniture. She helps him into the chair and then gets him some water and his pills.

“Talia, that thing—that thing _did_ something to my memories. My head,” Peter abruptly says. “I remember being dragged by the neck and then that thing was trying to make me get a rise out of Chris for—for—”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she says, seeing his hands starting to shake.

It’s a mistake. His eyes snap up to her, hot with anger. “You need me to tell you,” he says. “It wasn’t a head injury. It did something to my mind, because why else would I have taken it there, and then it was trying to do it again, down in that hellhole. If I’m _not_ a werewolf, then I want to be one just so I can deal with anyone who tries that again.”

“All right, Peter,” Talia says. When he tries to go on, she leans down a little and looks him in the eye. “Yes.”

He tries one more time, then slumps back in his seat. He’s still angry, but he understands her.

“We need to deal with this,” he says.

“I’m going to,” she says. She gives him a moment, then steps forward and pulls the blanket, which he’d dropped, off the floor.

She gives it to him and he presses his lips together, then takes it from her. When she leaves him, he’s tucked it back around himself and is looking at the balcony again, a frown on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has been unusually light on endnotes compared to my usual practice, which is mostly down to my self-enforced policy of not spoiling things ahead of time. But I think at this point it's non-spoilery to say I'm generally in the nurture over nature camp, and so this is me playing out some thoughts about how different people really would be without the supernatural. The Hales don't really need the whole excuse of pack to be suspiciously close and amoral, and Talia's instinctive reactions are not really about external threats, when you get down to it.


	10. Chapter 10

Scott McCall thinks he needs to be chained up within an inch of his life because it’s the night of the full moon, and is distressed when he’s told that that is not going to happen. “You don’t know what I could do,” he keeps saying over and over again. “Stiles isn’t here.”

His mother flinches whenever Stiles is mentioned, but she pulls Talia aside to plead her son’s case. “Werewolves _are_ that strong,” she says, eyes bright and voice trembling. “I’ve seen him rip through a door like it was paper.”

“And I believe you,” Talia says carefully.

Melissa’s gaze sharpens, even though her voice doesn’t steady. “Which means what?”

“Which means that there are people outside this house just waiting to shoot down any werewolf who comes out the door,” Talia reminds her. “And chaining one up isn’t going to solve that problem. If we chain them up, it’s just going to make it even more obvious when they break free.”

“Well, then are you just going to stand around?” Melissa snaps.

She wants to say something else, something along the lines of _and die_ , and Talia has to work to swallow the flash of irritation. It’s been a long night, and an even longer day, and she still isn’t going to get any sleep any time soon.

“If Stiles learned how to control your son, then you need to figure out what he did,” Talia tells her. “Or someone’s going to shoot him.”

Melissa sucks her breath, incredulous, and Talia braces herself for the protests, the screaming. But the other woman surprises her: Melissa takes another breath, and then her eyelids flutter and it looks as if she might pass out instead. And then she opens her eyes and stares intently at Talia.

“Even if I do that, there are three other men in here who could be turning into werewolves. You’re not telling me that you’re going to shoot Derek or Peter,” she says flatly.

“No,” Talia says evenly. “They’re not going to die.”

She might shoot them. Talia isn’t suicidal, and if she’s going to save her family, she needs to be up and conscious. She has the taser that Bridget Argent gave her, and she squeezed in fifteen minutes to research how to use it and check on a tree that it does, in fact, tase and doesn’t shoot something more lethal. 

She also has a jar of the gritty black stuff that someone has tried to spread around the outside of the house. She isn’t sure what it is, but she pulls it out and hands it over to Melissa.

“They put this outside. I don’t know why, they didn’t ask or tell me first,” she says.

Melissa takes the jar without looking at it, but the slight rustle of its contents brings her eyes down. She frowns at it, then raises it for a closer look. “Looks like dirt.”

“It’s not dirt. At least, it’s not the same as the dirt around here,” Talia says. “It could be some kind of magic. Stiles had masses of printouts in his bedroom about werewolf lore.”

“That’s a crime scene now,” Melissa says.

Talia raises her brows. “So?”

For a moment Melissa looks through her, not at her. It’s something Talia has seen on Derek’s face from time to time, that kind of desperate wish to look up and see something else. But unlike her son, Melissa doesn’t pull that inward, behind something less obvious; she blinks it away. Her voice trembles once more, then goes flat. “You don’t have those, do you?”

“I have some highlights from my lawyers. There are too many, I won’t have full summaries for a few days,” Talia says. “But there’s a man in this house who knows all about werewolves, and who doesn’t want to talk to his family right now.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to anyone,” Melissa says, but she’s distant about it, like someone reading lines off a sheet of paper. “He’s traumatized.”

“You’re a nurse,” Talia says, growing impatient again. “Do you want your son to be attached to a dead boy forever?”

Melissa’s chin jerks up and her eyes burn. She holds the jar by the top, as if to fling it in Talia’s face, and then she slowly, reluctantly, moves it against her ribcage to circle it with her good arm.

“If I’m learning about werewolves, what are you doing?” she asks.

“Learning about the people outside,” Talia says. “I’m trying to talk Bridget into dealing with Claudia for us.”

A flash of fear goes through Melissa’s face. “We still don’t know where she is?”

“No, they don’t,” Talia says. She and Melissa regard each other, and then Talia nods at the jar. “Can you deal with that?”

Another flash, less fearful, angrier, goes through Melissa’s eyes, but she nods easily enough. “If I find out how—”

“When you find out,” Talia says, and pauses to let the word choice sink in. “Call me. I’m not going far, and I’ll be here the whole night with you.”

“All right,” Melissa says.

* * *

“Your brother has interesting taste in literature,” Bridget observes, as she and Talia watch the woman’s team move one of Peter’s bookcases down the wall.

“You mean the ghost and Bigfoot books,” Talia says. “They’re research for the house. It’s haunted.”

Bridget nods and motions to her team members. None of them talk very much, although when they do, it’s all polite. It’d be like having a bunch of movers in the place, except for the fact that that’s a bag of severed fingers they’re handing around.

Peter’s going to kill Talia when he finds out, but the best story to hang everything together around the werewolf-sized hole that they have to leave ties everything to Kate Argent, not to the Stilinskis, so they need her prints here. They can’t have Claudia involved in how Kate got hold of Peter, not if they want to get to her before the police do.

“Is it really?” Bridget asks, as she steps out and back towards the main living room.

“Yes,” Talia says.

Bridget looks at her again, long and patient and not at all trying to hide the observation. The woman’s been cool and even about everything, even down to telling her nephew that he cannot plead his case to his own mother. She’d sounded like the lawyer Peter had toyed with being, talking about needing distance from the decision and making sure people who could think clearly were making it. “What kind of ghost is it? A poltergeist is going to be a real problem with all that energy they’re going to be throwing off. I told you that just having them indoors by themselves—”

“I told you that your people could watch from the woods. It’s not that big of a house that you can’t see all the doors,” Talia says sharply.

Too sharply, she thinks, as Bridget’s expression changes slightly. “I know it’s hard. Chris is the closest to a son I’m ever going to have, and I’m letting you keep him in there too.”

“I thought you would’ve checked yourself about the house,” Talia says, still composing herself.

Bridget stops across the kitchen island from her. A phone burrs somewhere and Bridget ignores it, folding her palms against the counter. “We took a look around, a little bit. You can get a feel for things, but ghosts are all over the spectrum. They’re not like werewolves that way. You really need to get to know one to understand how bad it’s going to be.”

“You don’t have to get to know werewolves?” Talia asks.

“Not in the same way. It’s like when you get to know your business partner, and when you get to know who’s the man dating your kid,” Bridget says without blinking. “I know what you think I sound like. I am like that, because I’ve been doing this so long. You have to figure out how you’re going to deal with loss and then you just have to stick with that if you’re going to make it through.”

She thinks that that’s going to enrage Talia, but it doesn’t. It all fits, and Talia can understand someone who is honest and who still isn’t to be completely trusted. This is familiar enough. “It’s haunted. It’s always been like that, since our family got the place,” Talia says after a moment. “Not the kind that throws things around, or wants to take your children away from you…it’s a feeling. Mostly. Occasionally we saw things, but they were…like recordings. Peter’s always been interested in trying to see how much of them were true. He thinks ghosts can lie, can show you what they want you to see.”

“I think they can too,” Bridget says, and then raises her brows. “Did you disagree?”

“I just never saw why you would care after you’re dead, what people thought of you. They can’t hurt you anymore,” Talia says. Then she takes a breath. “Anyway, you’d only get it if things were quiet. When things were—if people were—upset—you didn’t get it. All you got were what the people in your life were doing to you.”

Bridget nods as if this makes sense to her, and she’s heard it before. She’s not really concerned about anything that Talia is doing, is what’s clear. Talia thinks that she’s drawn lines in the sand to keep her family safe, and Bridget knows what those lines are and knows they aren’t going to stop her or her team from what needs to be done. That’s what she thinks.

“This Claudia hasn’t called her son’s phone once since Kate got your brother,” Bridget says. Her tone is brisker. “It’s not as if things have hit the news either. You said she cares for him—”

“She does,” Talia says. “Desperately. He’s the only thing that matters to her besides her husband, but he hasn’t gone anywhere.”

Bridget’s expression shifts, but before Talia can do more than stiffen, the woman holds her hand up. “I have someone watching Mr. Stilinski’s room and nothing’s been going on there either. Do you think any of the neighbors could’ve called her?”

“I don’t think any of them would _want_ to,” Talia says. “Can’t you find her with all the messages she and Kate were sending each other before? You said there were—”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Bridget says, before leaning forward. “We are going to find her, Talia. But first we have to get through the full moon and you need to finish learning what it can do to werewolves.”

She means that Talia needs to learn what Bridget thinks she should learn. But that is important too, and so Talia pushes her impatience down and listens to the woman.

Even within those limitations, Bridget has plenty to say. Talia takes her phone out at one point to take notes and Bridget catches her wrist, asks her if she wants to make the same mistake that Kate and Claudia had. So Talia puts her phone away and forces her memory to keep up. Wolfsbane, moon phases, anchors and first kills. Pack structure and omegas and madness. 

She’s going to forget details. She knew that going in; she knew too that she was never going to be able to get to the police before Bridget. Her goal is to protect her family, and for that she cannot have even her lawyers raise certain things with the police, not without laying grounds for suspicions they cannot afford to have.

Talia reminds herself of this: that she lives here, and that Bridget does not. And when Bridget brings the conversation back around to the danger of having potential werewolves on their first full moon all together, along with “an alpha, and God knows how he got that way since he’s not in shape to keep it,” Talia reminds Bridget too.

“It’s one thing to say that Chris is my brother’s latest interest, when the entire town knows how we are about that kind of thing,” she says. “It’s another to move all of you in there. The house is out in the woods but it’s not out of the way. People are going to go there, especially with the rumors now.”

“And you want to take that risk?” Bridget says sharply.

“It’s a haunted house. We’re a family with domestic disturbance reports on file,” Talia tells her. “People will see what they expect to see, and they will expect to see—”

“I don’t give a damn about your reputation. I care about keeping down how many more people get hurt,” Bridget snaps. “When they first turn, it’s like their whole world has come apart at the seams. They’re not going to know anything, know _anyone_. If you’re counting on them to not attack you because they know you—”

“I think you’re counting on that,” Talia says. She watches the way that the anger pushes into Bridget’s face and crowds up against the calm mask the woman wears. There are no cracks, but she can see the swirl beneath. “You can take your nephew with you, if you really want. You’re making that choice.”

Bridget is silent. She wears it well, Talia has to admit. As the seconds tick on she seems no less uncomfortable than before, as if she has always sat amid the tension. This is what she is used to—Talia must remember this.

“I’m choosing this because I want to give him the best chance to come out and still be himself,” she finally says. “He’s strong enough to. But we can’t pull him away from what he knows, not till he settles himself.”

“He’s been here less than a week,” Talia points out.

“Your people, they were with him when Kate was, and what happened then outweighs everything else that’s happened to him,” Bridget says in a slow, deliberate tone, the same one she’d used to explain werewolf lore to Talia. “That’s how you have to look at all of this. Whatever happened before doesn’t matter now. What matters is what happens going forward.”

“Well, as far as my family goes, it’s going to happen in our own home, with us and not strangers deciding,” Talia says. She goes around the island, only about a foot, but it’s enough for Bridget to turn and face her. The other woman doesn’t raise her arms, making her own point, and Talia stops. “No one else is in the house. You’re going to be watching. You’ll know that.”

For a moment Bridget looks skeptical. Then she shrugs and steps back. Her hand goes into her pocket and takes her phone out, laying it on the counter. She has other things to watch, she says. “I can’t make you let me save you.”

“I’m glad you know that,” Talia says.

* * *

When Talia returns to the house, it’s dinnertime. One of Bridget’s people helps carry the pizza boxes for her up to the door, and then she dismisses them as Laura comes out to help her.

Laura is quiet and tense all over with unspoken questions. They divide the boxes and set them out on a folding table in the widest part of the second-floor hallway, just after the stairs end. “Peter told me,” she abruptly says. “Werewolves.”

“Do you believe him?” Talia asks after a moment.

Her daughter flings her head up and stares wildly at Talia, and Talia thinks she will have to drop the boxes and go over and grab her. But then someone comes into the hallway—Melissa, with a listing, bleary-eyed Chris Argent behind her—and Laura jerks around to stare at them instead. She’s afraid, of course, but that’s not all that’s in her face and something in Talia slackens. You never know how your children will turn until they do.

“Derek made me go see Scott, because they both think this is nuts,” Laura says, her eyes on Melissa. The two of them don’t look unfriendly so much as watchful. “Cora doesn’t know yet. I made her go to my place, I didn’t know if the police are trying yours or Peter’s.”

“That’s probably good,” Talia says. “She still needs to go to school, and she’s not as good as you two in not talking back to people.”

Laura’s eyes shift back to Talia. She inhales a little, then drops her gaze. One of her hands is a fist rubbing against her hip and she seems to look at it before slowly raising her head.

“We are a _family_ ,” Talia tells her, low but firm. “You two, and Derek, and Peter. You will always be my family.”

She’s telling her daughter, and she watches something stir in Laura’s eyes, a frantic swirl like an arm just below the water’s surface. Then Laura blinks, and when she looks at Talia, the swirl is gone. “You think it’s better if I keep an eye on her?”

“Yes, I think you both shouldn’t sleep here,” Talia says, and listens for the way Laura doesn’t quite stifle her surprised gasp. She’s blunter than she usually would be, but then, her daughter is this much older now, speaking with her. “The lawyers will need to speak to someone. Jason knows the most—he has the general idea—”

“I can deal with him,” Laura says, still more for herself than for Talia, but she nods along with Talia.

“And if there’s anything that disturbs you, you call him,” Talia finishes. “We still don’t know about Claudia Stilinski.”

Laura blinks hard, while Chris starts enough for Laura to whip her head around and take a step back. He whitens, then drops his head, and next to him Melissa doesn’t react at all.

“I’m gonna feel better if we at least knew if she was in town or not,” Laura mutters.

“Take care of your sister,” Talia says, as a farewell.

Laura presses her lips together and lingers a little longer, asking a few questions too minor to not answer. Eventually she takes a pizza slice and goes.

“We’re having dinner?” Melissa says. She already has a paper plate in hand, but when Talia turns to her, she pushes it at Chris till he’s forced to accept it.

“Yes,” Talia says, raising her voice, as other heads, bodies slowly start to emerge into the dark hallway. “We’re having dinner.”

* * *

Dinner happens in stages. Melissa and Chris retrieve their food at the same time, not together, before Chris retreats to his room. Talia is expecting Melissa to take a portion to the room where Scott is, but instead Derek attempts that. He’s mostly rebuffed, and goes to the room across the hall where he sits in the doorway and eats his dinner. Melissa watches this with a tightness around her mouth and through her body that already looks lived-in.

“The stuff in the jar is mountain ash wood…ash,” Melissa tells Talia. She’s confident in what she’s saying but still feeling her way through the terms. “Werewolves can’t cross it.”

“Can werewolves-to-be?” Talia says, looking up.

“We tested it while you were dealing with our reluctant allies,” Peter says, and then offers up a thin, brittle smile when Melissa jerks around to look at him. He comes up to Talia’s side and picks at the crust on the remaining pizza till Talia sighs and tears it off for him. “If you’re far enough along, it does.”

In spite of herself, Talia tenses. “And?”

“Yes—” Peter nods at Scott’s room “—and no, and no, and…”

“Yes,” comes a curt grunt from Chris’ room.

“You’re not going to tell them right away,” Melissa says. She resettles herself. She doesn’t like Peter’s presence but she’s clearly made up her mind that this is not going to get in the way of what she wants to do. “That was part of it.”

Talia pauses over her cup of soda. “Of what?”

Chris comes back out into the hall, with a clean plate, and this time Talia notices that his injuries are strangely missing. It’s not a good make-up job either; he’s moving as easily as an athlete, even with how he keeps to the walls and moves only when they’re looking at him. They’re just gone, the cuts and bruises.

“The deal. You want me to help you through this instead of having to go to my family, then I don’t want them to know for sure till tomorrow,” Chris says.

“I don’t see a problem with that, but I’m curious. They’re already treating you as if you are one,” Talia says.

Then she looks at Peter, who hasn’t said as much but who meets her gaze with a warning glance of his own before sitting back and taking a full slice of pizza. It’s plain cheese and he reaches for the packets of red pepper flakes before he realizes she’s still watching, and instead plucks up a napkin instead.

“Yeah, I know,” Chris says, taking back her attention. He comes to the table but doesn’t sit in any of the stools they’ve borrowed from the first floor. The light overhead throws a strange shadow over his face. Then he grimaces and reaches up, rubbing at his jaw, and Talia watches the shadow—the fur—crawl back into his hairline. “It’s past dark. It isn’t going to be that much longer before it happens.”

“Chris thinks he can handle it,” Peter says, and then twists his head contemptuously as Chris looks at him. “Based on a lifetime of helping others.”

“Based on dealing with my—” there’s a judder in Chris’ bite, as prominent as Melissa’s stillness “—sister. Every werewolf is different. But if we could deal with it, then I think I can deal with me.”

Peter starts up sharply, then hunches oddly as Talia looks at him. His eyes drop before she can meet them and he clutches at his injured side.

“The deal is Chris’ family doesn’t know he turns till tomorrow, because he wants to tell his mother himself, and she’s not going to make it here any earlier than that,” Melissa finally breaks in. She and Chris are avoiding looking at each other. “Because then he’s also going to have to tell her that he knew Kate was—”

“I knew she was a werewolf, I didn’t know she was _that_ ,” Chris grates out. He seems strangely wounded, and when Melissa turns around and deliberately flicks a passionless gaze over him, he almost leans backward. He chooses to focus on Talia. “Anyway, you don’t care about my family’s issues.”

“I think we care when those issues are going to dictate the rest of our lives,” Peter says. His head is up again. He presses his shoulders back against the wall he’s leaning on, until Talia can see the skin around his mouth whiten from the pain. None of that makes it into his voice. “So you were her anchor, that’s what you mean. And you went away, so they could kill her, but she found you again. And she wanted you to get her pregnant so that your—”

“That doesn’t really matter, Peter,” Melissa breaks in again, and when Peter shoots her a vicious look, she simply stares back at him till a strain of confusion enters his eyes. “The point is, there’s a method to how you anchor yourself. So it doesn’t matter who the anchor is.”

“Yes, it _does_ ,” Peter insists. “If it didn’t, then do you think your son would’ve been half as destructive if he’d had someone else telling him what to do?”

Melissa grows silent and still, except for the rage in her eyes, which seems for a moment as if it means to burst free of her and tear through Peter and the rest of the house. Talia has her hand up towards Peter’s shoulder before she knows it, and even when Peter twitches and draws her attention to it, she doesn’t lower her arm.

“Stiles is dead,” Melissa says, as Peter winces again and hisses slowly through his teeth. “So it doesn’t matter. What matters is that my son is going to get through this night, alive, because he doesn’t have to _be_ that anymore.”

There’s a movement in Scott’s room, and maybe even a half-voiced call. Talia looks up and sees Derek’s profile staring into that room. Then Derek turns and looks down the hall at them. He starts to move as if he’s going to get to his feet, only Melissa beats him to it.

When she moves back from the table, Chris shifts himself against the wall. It’s unclear whether he means to avoid or something else, only that his action is in relation to Melissa.

“I’m going to take care of my son,” Melissa says, turning to Talia. She pauses. “I’m going to.”

_Are you going to stop me_ hangs tautly between them, like a trigger wire. Talia sees it, and sees Melissa at the other end of it. They stare at each other. Melissa’s shoulders heave once, with a deep breath the woman doesn’t actually take, and then she turns sharply on her heel and walks down the hall. Scott meets her at the doorway and she has to pause, but then seems to enter the room through sheer force of will. Derek doesn’t like it, but he simply lingers in his doorway as Melissa and Scott’s briefly audible conversation is cut off by the shutting door.

“Do you need your medication?” Talia asks Peter.

“Does _anyone_ think it’s going to help,” Peter mutters back. 

Then, when she fully turns towards him, he rises to his feet with a pained grunt. Shoulders off her outstretched hand and sweeps his used napkin to the table in the same imperious motion, before he returns to his room.

“Derek,” Talia says, turning back.

“I’m fine,” he says, before shutting his door.

Talia sits at the flimsy folding table for a moment, teetering on her stool, with cooling grease on her fingers. Then she takes a napkin for herself. She smooths the slick oils from her fingers, and doesn’t watch as Chris returns to his room.

* * *

The night is a cloudy one, and the moon isn’t actually visible. Talia spends it in that hallway, alternating between standing in front of doors and listening to the rough, strange noises behind them and sitting on the floor with her open purse in front of her. She has the taser, and she also has the gun she’d bought in the dying days of her separation from her ex. The bullets in it won’t work on werewolves, if Bridget wasn’t lying to her, but then, she hadn’t brought it for that.

It had been a bluff, when she’d first gotten it. Talia has never used it except for the classes she took years and years ago to get a proper license. She had never feared that her ex would touch her; that wasn’t his way, to simply destroy the thing that stood up to him. No, he would have liked to have destroyed everything around her, and then let the lack of support cave her to her knees. She’d gotten the gun because unlike him, when something needs to be dealt with, she does not waste her time with sadism. But he’d sensed that, or perhaps one of his few friends had finally gotten through to him, because he’d left town first, and had never tried to come back into their lives.

The gun was always unnecessary, she thinks when she looks at her phone and sees that the time has crept into the morning hours. The fear in the house, that has been enough before, and it is the same now. No one is coming into their house unless they let them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the past I've posted holiday-season stories that land on the more cheerful side (by far), but there's also the tradition of the scary stories told during the winter, when you're all stuck indoors and huddled by the fire, and that's what brought about this story. I've been reading a lot of folklore and Victorian ghost stories, and the best ones, to me, are the ones where the ultimate moral seems correct (what's considered evil versus good) but where the vehicle for it is a real surprise. And so I picked the title for this story because if you know your history, you know witch-hunts generally speak more about the evil that's already there than the evil that's allegedly forced its way into a community.


	11. Chapter 11

“I don’t like this house,” Chris says, sitting across from Talia. “I didn’t like it before—before now, and now I know why I don’t like it.”

“It’s haunted,” Talia says, and twists the cardboard coffee carrier towards him. Laura had come by twenty minutes ago, with breakfast and an update from the lawyers, and then had gone to take Cora to school. “Are you hearing things?”

Chris looks at Talia as if she’s disciplined a small child in front of him. Which is rich, she thinks but doesn’t say. She hasn’t slept since this man’s aunt dragged her out into the night and away from everything that she already knew could terrify her, into even more.

“I thought we should talk,” he says. His nostrils flare as the thin white line of steam wafts out of the carrier’s spout in his direction, but he keeps his arms primly folded against the table and his chest. “I think you have some ideas about werewolves, from what Melissa’s said to me.”

_What are they_ , most people would ask. “Do they work?” Talia asks.

Chris’ mouth thins. “Have you see what I did to your room yet?”

“I know plenty of handymen,” Talia says. “We’ve renovated this place before.”

More than Chris’ mouth changes: the planes of his face seem to shift beneath his skin, and the strain of the muscles against the reshaped bone is something she feels against her own skin. Some old, old instinct of hers, from well beyond her own lived experiences, wants to run away and dive as deep as she can into the woods, and wait, shaking, until the thing passes her by.

She is not, Talia reminds herself, an animal. She looks at Chris, and she notes how long he struggles with it. She sees the hint of sharpened tooth when his lips finally part in a half-suppressed gasp, and the way his eyes flick up to the ceiling before he gets hold of himself. They’re the only ones in the kitchen; everyone else is still upstairs.

“I think what you need to understand is that things don’t matter to me, except for how they can help me look after my family. I don’t hide that away, you know,” Talia says. She sips at her coffee, and when Chris’ eyes snap longingly to the cup, she suppresses her own sigh and reaches for one of the paper cups that’d come with the coffee. She fills it for him. “Your little test was right. They’re not werewolves, either of them.”

“Congratulations,” Chris says, with dulled but apparent sincerity.

She puts her cup down. “But that doesn’t matter, does it?” she says, waiting for him to look at her again. “We still know, and we can’t un-know.”

Something struggles out from under all the miserable thoughts Chris clearly is piling onto himself, and recognizes something in her. Then Chris looks away. He picks up the cup she’d poured for him and pulls it towards him with a strange reluctance. He’s openly sniffing at it now, but he doesn’t drink. “Gonna miss this,” he mutters. His eyes go back to her. “Yeah. You’re right. And anyway, your kid—your son, Derek. He’s gotten attached to the other werewolf in this house. Is that the idea?”

“Bridget tells me that werewolves aren’t meant to be alone, that they do badly when that happens. She called that being an omega,” Talia says, drinking more coffee. “But she said that it can be hard to make a group of them stable. And she said because of what Scott is, an alpha, it’ll be harder.”

“Alphas are leaders. They’re more powerful, they have more supernatural abilities than beta werewolves,” Chris says, with unexpectedly calm distance. He’s flipped a switch somewhere inside and pushed himself away. “They want more werewolves around them, but they want werewolves who do exactly what they say. And he’s a teenage boy, those usually don’t want to listen to you anyway.”

“Yes, I’ve had one,” Talia says.

Chris pauses and for a moment she thinks he takes offense at the comment, the lightness. His fingers knock against his cup, nearly sloshing out the coffee, and his nostrils flare again. He moves on. “You don’t get to be an alpha without killing another werewolf, either. I was asking Derek and Melissa how the hell Scott got this way, and neither of them knew.”

“One of them has an idea,” Talia says. “Don’t they?”

“Is that what you think?” Chris says, guessing that she’s guessing.

“I’m still catching up,” Talia says after a moment, deciding not to play that game. “I haven’t had time to talk to everyone.”

“Then why are you making time for me?” Chris says sharply. “If neither of them are werewolves, then my mother—my family, they’re not going to kill you. It’d be against our Code. Yeah, you know, and nobody’s going to forget that, but you’re not in—”

“Why were you asking to die before you knew for sure?” Talia asks. “You can still be killed, now. And it’s not that much harder. Your aunt explained how to me like she thought I could do it.”

Chris is silent, caught leaning forward. Then he resettles himself back in his seat, mouth a thin, humorless line. His fingers crook around his cup, caging rather than holding it, and for a moment Talia thinks there’s something _wrong_ about them.

But then he picks up the cup. He drinks it down in one brusque go, as if there’s no flavor in it at all, and then drops the cup so that it dances a little on the tabletop. There is nothing unusual about his hand.

“It’s a family business,” he says, looking down at his fingers. He lays them flat against the table, slightly spread, and then breathes in slowly as their joints thicken, grow hairy, swell about with muscle. Then he looks up at Talia. It takes a moment for her to realize his pupils are slitted like those of an animal. “You have to, with this sort of—it’s hard to find people to trust. My sister’s dead now, and I’m the only one left that my mother has.”

“You were with my brother,” Talia says, and Chris grimaces.

“I’m not going to touch him,” he says. “Not again. Not because he—it’s not—”

Talia snorts before she can help herself. “I don’t think he’s going to think it’s his fault,” she says.

Chris’ pupils widen, then round. She doesn’t look but she knows his hand is normal again. “I used to be married. Had to split up, we couldn’t have children. It has to be a girl, too, and—”

“But you’re a werewolf now,” Talia says. “Does that rule you out?”

For a long time Chris looks at her. He’s under strain, she can see that in the way he occasionally works his jaw, but she doesn’t feel that instinct to flee from him. He’s just a man, fighting against his obligations, like they all have to at some point.

“You don’t have cousins either, then,” Talia adds on, because she needs to get on with her day. “Your aunt—”

“She got attacked on a hunt once, and they saved her but they couldn’t—she couldn’t have any after that. Same thing with my ex,” Chris says suddenly. He closes his fingers into a fist and pulls his arm back close to his chest. “Look, my mother could adopt. We’re not medieval, we just—keep to who we know. But if she thinks I can keep from losing it, she’s just—going to ask.”

“You said last night that you could manage this,” Talia says.

“I was talking about me, not about anyone else,” Chris says, before he pushes back from the table. “I came here in the first place because werewolves keep dying in nearby towns. I don’t think that had to do with my sister. It just feels like—like this house feels, like it’s just _useful_ to have something else going on, but that—”

“So we should ask Scott,” Talia says, and raises her brows when he looks oddly at her. “He’s here for a reason, isn’t he?”

* * *

But Talia needs sleep. She is not as young as she used to be, and she is old enough now to not mistake adrenaline for quick wits.

“How drugged are you?” she asks Peter, as she curls herself across the far end of his bed.

He has his earphones slung around his neck, band pulled all the way out to accommodate the bulk of his bandages. His phone and laptop are on the floor, scattered amid pieces of clothing and other personal items in an uncharacteristic mess, and the explanation for it is in the stiff, awkward way that he’s trying to manipulate his tablet. “You told Laura to keep herself and Cora out of the way, didn’t you?” he says, before biting his lip. He swipes angrily at the tablet and nearly knocks it off his knee, then irritably rights it. “Drugged enough that I can probably tolerate your son’s inability to tell the difference between gratitude and infatuation, but…Talia, we can’t hole up in here forever. Chris can hear us through the walls.”

“So can Scott,” Talia mutters. “He’s talking to his mother now, isn’t he?”

“If she’d just done that in the first place nobody would’ve had to—” Peter exhales in frustration, then shifts against the headboard. “When are you planning to have the rest of the Argents over?”

Something’s wrong with her brother, and it isn’t drugs. Talia has known that since last night, and at this point the odd turns of phrase, the change in mannerisms, aren’t confirmations so much as ways for her to understand where they are with it. Because she does understand what Chris means, when he says that they just keep to who they know. When he says they’re not medieval, and doesn’t say that the reason why is because these things that you have to deal with have nothing to do with any specific time and place and everything to do with just watching out for anything coming after your family.

She’s still tired, Talia thinks. She needs a few hours, and she thinks she’s going to get them. “When I wake up. Chris’ mother is coming into town, finally, and maybe by that point somebody would’ve found Claudia.”

“Where are they looking?” Peter asks, sounding as if he’s half-distracted.

“I don’t know, you’ll have to ask them when they come over,” Talia says. She listens to Peter’s lack of movement. “They’re watching her husband in the hospital, and her house. I don’t know who else they have around. I got the impression they’re prioritizing Kate Argent’s funeral.”

Peter fumbles with the tablet again, cursing under his breath. “Well, they’ll need a small army for that, from what Chris has said.”

“You two are talking?” Talia says, and thinks about rolling over to face him.

“No. But Melissa is, and she cares enough about Scott now to mention it when she thinks someone’s going to take advantage of him,” Peter says. “I don’t think she’s sold on Derek, you know. She wanted it to be her, but you know him—he walked right into it.”

“I know,” Talia says, changing her mind. She closes her eyes.

* * *

Lunch is late, and taken separately as they all make arrangements to deal with their continued absences. Talia has to put Melissa on briefly with the lawyers, then asks her for a few minutes to talk out on the back porch.

“They can still hear, you know,” Melissa says. Her eyes are bloodshot and her skin has that waxy look people get when they’ve been up too long and keep themselves awake with coffee rather than splashes of water to the face.

“They can see,” Talia says, nodding at the woods.

Melissa stiffens, but to her credit, doesn’t turn around. “Do they still want Scott?”

“I don’t think they care about Scott. They just want a werewolf,” Talia says. Then she shakes her head; her nap helped, but it didn’t bridge all the gaps. “I don’t even think it’s that. I think they just want some way to—”

“Bury this?” Melissa flings.

She looks at Talia as if she has more where that came from, and that the point of this talk is to show that off. Talia wonders if she should have waited till Bridget was here as well, and just had them together. If Melissa’s going to be this single-minded, then there are other ways to understand what happened last night.

Then Melissa looks down. She folds her arms under her breasts and pulls them in tight, as if she’s cold, even though it’s an unseasonably warm day and Talia chose the back porch for its shade. “It’s Derek,” she mutters.

“That they want?” Talia says.

Melissa looks up again. She knows Talia isn’t that mistaken. “No, that Scott—that he needs now. They’re right, werewolves think about—about packs. It matters more than anything else, and if Scott can have someone—that’s the key to it. He has someone who—who believes he hasn’t changed.”

She says if as of the words are coated in acid, and yet Talia doesn’t think that disbelief or contempt is the reason why they’re so distasteful to Melissa. “Better him than no one, now that Stiles is dead.”

“Oh, I’m not jealous,” Melissa says sharply. She lifts her chin, pride coming first, before her eyes narrow and she really studies Talia’s expression. “I care about getting my son through this. It’s just—you don’t think that Peter and Derek are the same people they were a couple days ago, do you?”

“I think that they’re my brother and my son,” Talia says, and waits to see if Melissa’s temper or her sense will come first. “I think about who they are after that.”

It’s a close call, Melissa shifting in place as her frustrations writhe across her face, but what surfaces is…a kind of curiosity. “You’re really…”

“Isn’t this what people say about us?” Talia asks.

It’s not the kind of question that’s looking for an answer. Some people try to give one anyway, and that’s informative. But it’s just as informative when people don’t, and Melissa is one of them. Instead she stares at Talia, something bleak and cold entering her eyes. She was always a survivor, was going to be one of those plucky success-against-the-odds stories that the local news features, but now, after the two nights…she’s a different person. If she wants to speak about that.

“I think they’re going to get together,” she says, as if they’re talking about actors on TV. “I don’t think it’s like Chris wants us to think, how it works, but I think they just—Scott thinks he needs someone to tell him how he used to be, and Derek—”

“Derek wishes he could be part of something,” Talia says. She’d hoped that she and Peter could find something harmless to play that part, but they’d taken too long. She can admit that, now that it’s too late for it. “Something that’s not his family. He never said anything about Scott or Stiles, and I don’t think it’s just because he was afraid of them.”

“It wasn’t Stiles so much as his mother,” Melissa says with complete certainty. It’s enough to make Talia look closer at her, at the way her gaze has turned from clear and unpretending to glazed. “That damn woman—she had Stiles playing up to her, trying to make her happy. He just thought that being a little psycho was going to finally do that. Sometimes I wish Noah had just died—and I liked him. We were friends with them, you know?”

The wind swirls up around them, and inside there’s an abrupt, muffled sound that makes both of them look at the door. Melissa takes a step towards it, then stops when she sees Talia isn’t also moving to see what had happened.

“I don’t think anything’s broken,” Talia says.

“But that sounded like it’s from the first floor, and we’re all upstairs,” Melissa says.

“ _We’re_ not,” Talia says, looking at the porch around them, and then she sighs. “Is this spooking you, after—”

“I don’t know. I—honestly don’t know anymore. And it’s not—I’m not trying to pretend to be braver than I am, I just—I feel like it’s burned out of me,” Melissa says, the words rushing out and yet sounding dragged from her. “I’m pretty sure I’m still afraid but I think I don’t—I’m not sure what being afraid feels like anymore. Is this place really haunted?”

Talia shrugs. “I don’t know what you mean by haunted,” she says. She half-expects Melissa to turn angry, to treat her like an abnormal coldblooded bitch, but to her surprise the other woman waits for her to finish. “It’s got something. It was much worse when my parents—when Peter and I were growing up. But I don’t think it’s…someone’s spirit, or if it is, it’s someone so long dead I don’t think you can call it human now. You can feel it, and sometimes things happen, but if you—if there are _other_ things that matter more, if the last thing that’s scary to you is some undefined _feeling_ —I don’t think about it much. A lot more’s happened in my life besides it.”

“I guess it’s not like it can do much to Scott now,” Melissa says after a long moment. She seems genuinely relaxed by the thought. “So you’re not worried about Derek getting hurt.”

“I _am_ worried,” Talia says, looking at her. “But he can learn, is what you’re saying.”

“Yeah, it’s something we can—look, I’m still Scott’s mother, I’m not about to walk off from this,” Melissa says. She’s a little more strident than she needs to be, and then she settles, pulls her shoulders out of their rigid hunch. “I think that helps. It’s not the same as how Stiles was going at it. I think he had Scott convinced that nothing was going to hold him back except—but they don’t have to be the same th—person. I’m keeping an eye on him so Derek doesn’t have to do all of it. He doesn’t seem to be as—as jealous about it as Stiles was.”

There’s a point in that for Talia, but something catches her attention and she only nods. They can only work through so much at a time and she’s not sure what is bothering her. She turns and stares down the long, winding road through the woods. “What about Chris?”

“What about him?” Melissa says.

Too raw, too quick. But Talia can’t assume Melissa’s a novice now and picks her words carefully. “Is he going to work? In a pack?”

“Do you really think my son needs someone who wanted to—to _fuck_ your son just so they’d both—both—”

Talia twists around and Melissa steps back, surprised herself. She’d been looking for a reaction, but not that one, and she’s still sorry, breaking the bad news. Still the nurse, Talia can’t help thinking, as she looks up at the porch ceiling. Derek—is probably near Scott, so that may not be so bad, but her brother—

“It’s her,” Melissa says. She’s staring past Talia at the car now pulling up the road. “Bridget. I thought you said she was coming for dinner, not now.”


	12. Chapter 12

“Where’s—” Chris says.

“She’s still a couple hours out. It doesn’t make sense for her to come in till we know what’s going on here, and that’s the problem,” Bridget says crisply, looking past him to Talia and Melissa. “The dead boy, his body’s gone.”

Melissa stiffens. “Stiles?”

“I thought you were watching for her,” Talia snaps. “I thought you had—”

“You told us that she’s been working on getting her husband out of his coma, so we’ve been watching him and he hasn’t moved,” Bridget says. She isn’t defensive about it, just unpacking her explanation one piece at a time so they can all see how shattered it is. “The body was in the morgue and the police doubled the guard after we got to Kate’s corpse. I thought they got the point.”

Chris’ breathing grows heavy enough for them to look at him; Talia catches herself moving away from him. Melissa stays put, but her hand goes into her pocket as she watches him press his hand against his mouth. “You think Kate—she did something to him? Was he going to turn?”

“We checked. She didn’t, it was just a broken neck,” Bridget says. “Otherwise we would have done his body at the same time we did Kate’s. And this woman, his mother, if she’s who we’re thinking did it—”

“Well, who else would it be?” Melissa snaps. She takes her hand out of her pocket, curled in a fist but not holding anything. “And you just—the _police_? Noah was one of them! They all know Claudia, they would’ve—”

“They don’t think she’s crazy?” Talia says.

“Oh, they do, but you don’t understand,” Melissa says, staring at Talia as if Talia should have. “They do, but she’s still married to one of them, and—look, it doesn’t matter. What is she going to do with Stiles’ body?”

“Raise him from the dead.” Peter pauses in the doorway, a tight smile on his face. His fingers whiten as he grips the door and swings it further open, and then limps through it. “What else would she do with it?”

“Well, that should be easy to find, shouldn’t it?” Talia says, looking to Bridget and Chris.

Chris starts to nod, but then stops when Bridget shakes her head. “How does that help?” she asks.

“What do you mean, how does it _help_?” Peter snaps. “She’s his mother, she’d want him back.”

Bridget studies Peter. She’s not impressed, but there’s something more to her scrutiny, something that makes Talia want to shift closer to Peter even though she knows that’d be a tip-off—even though she knows that Peter isn’t being himself. 

“Didn’t he kidnap your nephew?” Bridget suddenly says. “The dead kid.”

“He did,” Peter says, a little more levelly. “So he could protect his friend, because they heard _you’d_ sent—”

“And who did they hear that from?” Bridget says.

Chris lets out a slow breath. “Kate. She wanted someone down here—me, she knew you’d send me. To get me out of the way, you figured, till you could catch her and we’d be sure of the line again.”

His voice twists at the end, bitter enough that they all look at him, even Bridget. But Bridget looks at him the same way that she’d looked at Peter, and Talia finds herself thinking she didn’t really need to ask why Chris would rather die to continue in this family.

“Yeah, so what’s in that for this Claudia woman? If the werewolves hadn’t started dying, then we wouldn’t have come at all, and your son—” Bridget nods at Melissa “—wouldn’t have been worried about us.”

“What makes you think the Stilinskis knew _your_ wayward child was pulling the strings?” Peter says. He’s less sharp about it, but still careless. “For all they knew, that woman could have just been a source of information about werewolves, since they were getting precious little knowledge elsewhere, and—”

“Why are you dragging this out?” Talia breaks in, as Bridget continues her speculative study of Peter. “You know. You can tell us.”

“I’m trying to figure out something else,” Bridget says.

“Well, then either do it off my porch or tell us what it is. I have two werewolves in here, half a dozen calls from the police to return, and some psychopathic woman stalking this town looking to bring her—”

Bridget exhales loudly enough to cut Talia off. “Look, it’s harder to bring back the dead than it is to bring somebody out of a coma. If Claudia could resurrect her kid, why the hell is her husband still in a coma?”

Peter makes an indistinct noise. He looks startled when Talia looks over, but he’s looking past Bridget, not at her. There’s no one where he’s looking. And when he realizes he’s attracted attention, he simply rolls his eyes and looks at Bridget. “As my sister said, we’re not interested in the rhetorical flourishes. Either say something useful or leave us to deal with our own messes.”

“Kate promised them she’d turn the husband, and bring him out of the coma that way,” Chris says. “Right?”

“They had an alpha around, they wouldn’t need that,” Peter says impatiently. “Besides, I admittedly saw very little of her and was suffering from a head injury, but I just don’t see how anyone could’ve missed that sort of psycho—”

“She tried to offer that, and they turned her down. They’d been looking for a way to get Scott to stop being a werewolf,” Bridget says. She shifts forward just a little, but it’s enough to signal her intent. She’s done watching and means to drive something. “They didn’t want to double the problem. That’s how the kid ended up an alpha anyway—he believed that old fairytale about killing the one who turned him.”

A choked, inarticulate noise comes from Melissa. She moves back, her hands down at her hips in fists, and she gives Bridget the kind of look that Talia would expect from…from a werewolf. From something brutal and animalistic and bent on death.

Bridget flicks a look at her. Melissa swallows visibly, her eyes still burning, but says nothing. Nobody disbelieves what Bridget is saying, after all. 

“He only was a werewolf in the first place because this Claudia tried to get one to come and heal her husband, and didn’t think they’d have an agenda of their own,” Bridget goes on. “She’d heard something about how they can draw pain, and got it mixed up—”

“Lack of reliable sources,” Peter says.

“Yeah, well, if it didn’t work with one, I don’t know why you’d keep trying to get in other ones. At that point that’s just ignoring what you see,” Chris says abruptly. He’s frowning at Peter. “You didn’t know anything. He—Derek—he shouted that. So how do you k—”

“You think Claudia’s still trying to heal her husband, not bring her son back,” Talia says, looking at Bridget. “She wants his body for that.”

Peter had been turning to Chris, but at that he snaps back around. He’s wild enough about it that his balance is off, and he has to stumble to regain it. He doesn’t look as if he cares.

“Yeah, I think that’s the idea. From the texts it doesn’t look like she told her kid anything about promising Kate Scott’s power if she could heal the husband, and you know what that means,” Bridget says. 

“She promised her that she could _kill_ my son?” Melissa spits out.

“How do you know that’s what that means?” Peter snaps, as the door suddenly swings open behind him, showing an empty room. “It’s not just a myth, alphas can give up their power to heal without—”

“Well, but that didn’t work with Scott, did it?” Bridget says. “He couldn’t do it. He’s too young, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, period. So you were going to get an older werewolf, but she said if she was going to do it, she’d need to take enough power from Scott first and then use it. You figured fine, Scott doesn’t want to be a werewolf anyway, but your mother knew—”

“I don’t know what, exactly, you’re trying to imply,” Talia says, grabbing at Peter’s arm. His hiss turns from angry to pained, but she digs her fingers in even when she realizes the unusual softness is down to a bandage. “Our mother’s been dead for nearly fifteen years.”

And finally, Bridget loses her patience. “Don’t act as if you don’t know _exactly_ what I’m talking about. He _has_ your brother, if you couldn’t tell. Or do you not give a damn?”

Melissa and Chris look sharply at Peter, who if he were healthy and whole would have been able to force himself out of Talia’s hold before this. But he isn’t, and so Talia can turn faster than him, and step across his body so that she’s between him and the rest of them as she pushes Peter back into the house. “Bridget, either you’re telling us this because it’s something that needs to be stopped or you’re telling us because you’re torturing us. Make up your mind. We’ll be in the kitchen,” she says, and then kicks the door behind her.

* * *

“She thinks I’m _possessed_ by that boy,” Peter snarls.

Talia sighs. “You’re not possessed, Peter. I know you.”

Peter looks at her, disbelieving, and Talia spreads her empty hands against the butcher’s table.

“But he’s here, isn’t he?” she adds, and then sighs again when one of the windows rattles. “I thought you didn’t bother with the teenagers. Not since that whole disaster with Derek’s girlfriend, what’s her name.”

Her brother’s got half a mind to pretend he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. He’s in pain, partly because of her: she can see the dents her fingers have left in his sleeve. But he knows better.

“Paige,” he eventually says. “Who was certainly old enough to know not to go tampering with other people’s controlled substances, even if _your_ son wasn’t.”

“No matter how attractive the warning was? I told you, if you’re going to come up with some sort of loyalty test, you need to remember your audience,” Talia says, amused in spite of herself. Then she sobers, and it’s not because the window is still rattling. “Chris must be still talking to her. Bridget, I mean.”

“Trying to convince her to let him die,” Peter snorts, and then he glances over his shoulder. He pauses, his eyes flicking back before the rest of his head turns to face her. “He might still be able to hear. It’s a large house and the walls are thick, but werewolves are…remarkable, actually. When they’re not trying to kill you.”

Talia tilts her head. “If you know he’s doing this to save his friend, then why—”

“It’s not _just_ that, you know I’m not that much of an altruist,” Peter says. He glances to the windows, his lips twitching, and then he carefully leans against the counter. A little sweat is beading along his hairline near his temple. “Derek’s not going to stand by and let Scott die either.”

“I’ve noticed,” Talia says, pushing him to move on. If she wasn’t going to take it from Bridget, she’s not any more interested in taking it from him, even if as her brother he’s granted more slack.

Peter pauses, dramatic as always. “Scott needs a pack. That pack needs a leader, and it’s not going to be him. And I’d hope you weren’t planning on it being Derek either.”

“No, but I think we should deal with one thing at a time. Starting with how you’re going to lose your new friend if his mother has her way,” Talia says.

There’s a violent cracking noise. Glass particles fling themselves out of the window nearest her, some making it as far as the table legs. Peter startles and lets out an exclamation, trying to turn to see and then trying to put his arm up to protect his eyes. The pain catches him halfway—it hurts Talia to watch him contort and then collapse against the table, clutching at his arm. It hurts her, but she watches.

“If you’re a ghost, you’re going to see for yourself,” Talia says into the sudden stillness. “We can find your mother, and bring her here, and you can see. You _will_ see if you hurt him, I’ll make sure of that. You’re not the only one who’s tried to take up space in this house.”

It continues to be quiet, aside from Peter’s rough breathing. He pushes himself up on his good arm and looks at her, then slumps over again. Eventually Talia goes around the counter. She offers him her hand and he gives it a frustrated look, and she puts it under his elbow anyway, walking him towards the nearest chair.

“The Argents are still here, Peter. And they hunt werewolves,” she tells him.

“I _know_ that,” he says, twisting away and looking up at her at the same time. “But you don’t know—”

His mouth seals. He continues to stare at her, full of something simmering and coiling back on itself, a darkness that has nothing to do with dead boys, or this house. It’s too live and present for that.

“I don’t know what she said to you, Peter, when she had you,” Talia says, and watches that darkness inside her brother churn. She doesn’t bother to add that she doesn’t know exactly what happened either; the details aren’t relevant when she can see the fresh scars of them all over him. “But it will not happen again. I haven’t always kept things away the first time, but the second—”

“I know.” His mouth twists, and then he spits out a tired breath. “Well, you know it wasn’t because I didn’t think you were already—”

“I know, Peter,” she says. “And I’m going to take care of it. Now just try and not complicate this, either of you—I’ve already got the McCalls to think about.”

“Not Bridget Argent?” he says.

“That’s what I mean,” she says, turning away.

Peter makes a noise. Talia stops, and looks back, and for a moment her brother is half-out of his chair, hand raised and head turned towards nothing. The skitter of a little glass against the floor, that’s nothing.

He looks at her. His expression is still changing back from his reaction to nothing, but she can see that the darkness has settled in him. Still there, but quiet and resting. A little curious, maybe even a little regretful. He has moments sometimes, Peter, when she thinks he wishes he didn’t feel the way he does. “Talia,” he says, tilting his head. “You know he’s dead. And breaking things won’t get anything done—he needs me. He can’t risk losing me. He might have lost his temper for a moment, but after what happened to him—anyway, we both know he needs me.”

But Peter is Peter, and he will never be anything but. “I’m going to take care of it,” Talia says again. She lets her eyes drift to the empty space beyond Peter’s shoulder, where a shadow flicks past the broken window, then back to him. “You’re going to get what you want.”

“You’re going to do what you think I want,” Peter snorts. He reaches up and absently rubs at his injured side. “I’m not your son. I’m not listening to him merely because I have a delusional approach to relationships.”

“No, I know,” Talia says. She does not say, like when you said you’d slept with Chris to see why he was snooping around us, or like the thousand other times that Peter has seen something or someone that was a threat and that he thought he could turn. He is who he is. “That’s why I’m listening to you. And that’s why I’m going to talk to them for you, so he won’t go away. All right?”

She waits, then turns. This time no one stops her.

* * *

Melissa’s waiting for her. “She’s still outside. She said you’d come back out,” she relates, half-parroting, half-challenging. “Talia, I haven’t asked but what the hell is—”

“The house is actually haunted,” Talia says. “Not like you see in the movies, but you hear voices. Occasionally you see things.”

Part of Melissa wants to spit incredulously at Talia. It’s in the way the woman’s eyes widen. But another part of her understands how, at this point, that has to be motivated by pure spite, and that has never come naturally to Melissa. She has other priorities.

“So who’s haunting Peter?” she says, after drawing a long breath.

“Stiles,” Talia says.

When Melissa exhales now, her breath shoots out of her like a bullet. “And you—you’re just standing there? With what he did to—do you know what he did to Derek? To your son?”

Something moves above them. It’s not really a sound so much as a sensation, though when Talia glances up to confirm, she sees the vibrations still running through a loose light fixture. “Are you going to take it upon yourself to tell me no matter what he wants?”

Melissa sucks her air, eyes wide and burning. “What—how can you—”

“I can care,” Talia says. “I can care enough about my family to wait to get outraged until after I’m sure about what they need. _You_ might not approve but it’s not your decision to make.”

“I don’t know if I want my son to stay here,” Melissa snaps. “With all of—”

“Well, you’re welcome to go off with Bridget if that suits you better,” Talia says. She doesn’t let her voice snap but it has just as much sting. She can see that in Melissa’s recoil. “If you think you’ve worked things out with Chris enough to trust them.”

Melissa takes another step back. Her hand rises and for a moment it’s unclear whether she means it for Talia, despite her retreat, or for herself. It hangs in the air, and then dips. Then rises, then dips as she takes a long, shuddering breath. She mutters something to herself, her lips grimacing back from her teeth. Then, shoulders visibly bracing, she looks back at Talia.

“Is he here right now? Listening?” she demands. She waits, and then lets out an angry, disbelieving snort. “ _Stiles_.”

“I’m not a ghost whisperer,” Talia says. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t—you don’t know. You _don’t_ know. That is the _last_ thing I can believe from you, of all people—” Melissa’s voice rises until there’s another sound above them, a double set of thuds like someone had started to walk and then stopped. She looks up at the ceiling, then at Talia. When she starts talking again, it’s much softer, but still no less hostile. “What did living in this house do to you? I don’t—I knew you were—it wasn’t just the gossip, I’ve _seen_ you, with your family, and what happens—what you make sure happens when they get into a jam, but I still th—but no, you really are this way.”

What way does she mean, Talia doesn’t wonder, because she’s heard this from too many people over her life to bother anymore. “I’ve always been like this,” she says simply to get Melissa to move on. “The house didn’t have anything to do with it. When it started trying to get under my skin, I just knew it was doing that. It didn’t matter, because what mattered to me was, and is, my family. And you’re the same way. You’re just trying to talk yourself out of it, for some reason I can’t understand. I thought you saw that we can’t do that now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Melissa says too viciously, too quickly. The fear in her eyes is more of a confirmation than a giveaway.

Talia doesn’t have the time for this. “What did you promise him?”

“She’s still outside, you know, she’s hanging around waiting for—” Melissa stutters, then looks at Talia. “I didn’t promise her anything, I just told her, if you think you’re coming for my son—”

“That’s not who I mean, and you know it,” Talia says. 

Melissa stares silently, resentfully at her for a moment. Then, aggravated, she gestures silently to her ear, then above their heads. “In case you’ve forgotten.”

“Then I can just ask him myself,” Talia says, and makes to move past Melissa.

The other woman seizes her arm before she can. It hurts, surprisingly: Talia blinks against the way Melissa’s fingers dig at her, then turns. She’s still only halfway around when Melissa leans in to hiss at her. “His mother wants a kid, somebody to pass this down to. But werewolves—that can pass down too, sometimes. If that happens they’re not going to let the kid stay, even if they don’t kill them, so he wanted—he wants someone who he can ask to take—”

“Why on earth doesn’t he just stick with wanting to die?” Talia asks. It’s honestly the first thought that comes to mind.

“He still does, but I told him he can’t till he tells me how to save my son,” Melissa says. She stops and her fingers loosen. Her eyes want to dip but at the last moment she keeps them on Talia. “I—I made him. I mean, I talked him into—”

“You’re his anchor,” Talia says, putting the word to it.

Melissa flinches as if she’s been slapped, and her hand falls away. Her lips move and Talia doesn’t need to hear the words to know the woman wants to deny it, but can’t bring herself to lie.

“So there’s really some kind of way to not be a werewolf anymore,” Talia adds.

“This isn’t what Scott was—this isn’t good for him,” she says. “I have to find a way to get him out of it.”

“Oh, I’m not second-guessing you. If it gets you that, then I wish you nothing but luck,” Talia says.

A little steel flashes into Melissa’s eyes. “What happened to making sure your son—”

There’s a clatter on the stairs—the ones to the basement. Talia and Melissa both turn, Melissa half-stumbling in surprise, and then the basement door bursts open. Derek hangs on the knob, gasping for air, his eyes searching till they find Talia.

“Scott’s gone,” he says.

Melissa starts to snap, stops, and then runs around Talia and halfway up the stairs to the second floor, only to visibly wilt when Chris suddenly comes into view, coming down them. Talia takes the moment to walk to Derek. “Why were you in the basement?” she snaps.

“Because—he knows they’re all watching him, he saw some of them in the trees and it was—it’d freak anyone out,” Derek says, eyes flicking away, then back. His chin drops even as his shoulders spread out to make his bulk even bigger. “And he heard everything you said on the porch, with Stiles’ mom, and he thinks this is all his fault—”

“So you showed him how to get out of the basement?” Talia says.

Derek grimaces. “It was just to show him we’re not actually trapped, okay? I thought it’d calm him down, but then you started talking about making him _not_ a werewolf—”

His eyes do leave her now, going to Melissa with their accusations. “He shouldn’t be one!” she says, before catching hold of the railing. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Derek says, jerking his hand at the door. “He just went before I could—and I can’t run that fast, so I came up here because we need to get him before she does. Okay?”

* * *

They do need to get to Scott before Claudia Stilinski does, and Melissa can’t do that all on her own. She doesn’t know her son well enough to know where he would run.

“She doesn’t trust you any more than she does Chris’ aunt,” Peter points out, pretending as if he’s working on his laptop.

“She thinks she knows what I care about,” Talia points back. She leans against the doorway and watches the tremble in Peter’s fingers. “Where does Stiles think he is?”

Peter’s fingers snap into a fist before he can stop himself. He wishes he had, she can see that resentment when he looks up at her. “Why would you think Stiles cares to let her find him?”

It’s so very her brother that Talia can’t help but smile fondly at him, even as he bridles and then the empty chair next to him skitters by itself, making him start. “You can’t get what you want this way, Peter,” she says. “You don’t know enough yet, and for that we need time. You always do better when you know more than them.”

“Well, forgive me for being assaulted and then drugged up to my eyeballs. I would’ve RSVPed otherwise,” Peter snaps. It’s as absentminded a retort as is possible with that kind of tone, his eyes flicking away from her and around the room. Then he pushes back from his laptop. He hesitates, his head cocking towards the last place he’d looked, and then presses his lips together. “We can’t let Scott—”

“We’re not going to let him die. Derek already asked for that,” Talia says.

This time Peter doesn’t even act as if he’s not listening to someone else. His lips curl slightly upward. “Scott’s not dumb, and he knows enough about police practice from m—from Stiles. He’s not about to go to any of the declared crime scenes—not the Stilinski house. And his own house—”

“Is not welcome.” Talia waits. “Is it?”

“There’s a section of the preserve where they used to go to practice,” Peter says. He reaches for the laptop again.

“I thought he wasn’t an idiot,” Talia says. She hears a small scuffing noise behind her, like a carelessly kicked sneaker against wood, but doesn’t turn around. “Bridget has her teams out. And before you say anything, we couldn’t do anything. She was going to find out sooner or later—”

“I kno—” Peter starts, and then leaps up from his seat, alarmed. He contorts as he does, grabbing at his arm, and then stumbles as one of his feet catches in the chair leg. He’s quick enough to right himself that Talia doesn’t lunge into the room, but then he stays in a defensive crouch, gripping at the table edge. “She’s a player, and you can’t simply leave her off the board. But—”

“If you wanted to stay on it, you should’ve been a little smarter about who you let into your house. Peter wouldn’t have just gone over by himself, not with your mother,” Talia says. Not snaps, she says it calmly, even as she sees one of the chairs vibrate wildly as if someone’s gotten hold of it and is jerking it back and forth. “My son wants your friend back and safe, and I want my _family_ looked after, and if you aren’t willing to reconcile those, I’ll find someone who will. It doesn’t matter to me that you’re dead, Stiles. If you hurt my brother, or anyone else in my family, it’s just a matter of time.”

“Talia, could you—” Peter hisses, looking sharply around himself. 

Then he looks again, slower, a hint of confusion coming into his face. His gaze sweeps back the other way, a little faster, a little more urgent, and then stops about a third in. His shoulders relax.

“Scott used to hide at the high school, too,” he says. He still looks at her as if she should be grateful he’s decided to skip lecturing her. “Not in—there’s a groundskeeping shed by the sports fields. Derek can show you, if he’s helping.”

“He is helping,” Talia says. “Thank you.”

Peter blinks hard. He straightens himself as she turns, but that’s not why she pauses. It’s the small, almost-missed ripple of his shirt against his side, as if it’s been tweaked by another’s hand.

“So we’re going all-in for Derek,” Peter says. His tone is intentionally neutral.

“We’re going all-in on what is going to get people to stop threatening us,” Talia corrects him. She looks at Peter. “If he’s what Scott needs to come back, then he’ll help. You’re needed more here.”

He looks back, ready to meet the challenge. Always her little brother in that way, she thinks, but she’s careful to keep it out of her face. Affection right now isn’t what he’s going to respond to. She keeps looking at him, waiting for the bemusement to creep in, then the irritation. He opens his mouth to make a demand and she thinks he’s too tired, too medicated, she can’t—and then Peter, as usual, switches at the last possible moment to simply staring back at her. Asking.

“I’m getting us what we want,” she says. “And this is what you want, or else you wouldn’t be helping. You know I’ll always do that for you—you just never appreciate the timing, Peter.”

“It’s not that I can’t see what you’re doing,” he snorts, but he’s more than half-bluffing. He’s still not quite ready to admit to himself why he wants this. “But these are different stakes than before.”

“No, they’re not,” she says. She’s still satisfied; he has enough to go on, and he’ll have the time to figure it out. “It’s always the same stakes for me. Always.”

* * *

“Yeah, I know where that is,” Derek admits. “But why—”

“Melissa needs to keep Bridget away from him, she can’t be seen anywhere near the right direction,” Talia tells him. “Besides, you’re the one he’ll respond to.”

Derek flushes and looks away, and avoids looking back as Talia drives him to the high school. It’s a Saturday and late enough in the day that nearly all extracurriculars are over with. There are still enough cars that Talia doesn’t want to park in the school lot itself, but the shed is far enough from the buildings that she can find parking behind a church within walking distance.

“Mom,” her son finally says as she cuts the engine. “Mom, I should—I should tell you something.”

Talia can see a few people near the school, small colored figures moving across the dull brown walls. She thinks they’re moving towards the doors, or the cars in the lot, and not out to the fields. “Is this going to help convince your friend to come where we can help him?”

Derek makes a low, strangled sound, stark enough that she’s surprised to find him not choking when she looks over. He’s staring at her with wide eyes just on the edge of unfocusing, as if he’s willing himself to not fall into whatever emotion is trying to overwhelm him.

“I just—I wanted to keep you and Peter and everyone out of it,” he finally says.

“We can’t do that anymore, Derek,” Talia says, looking back out at the fields. There are less people now.

“I know—I know that. But I need to tell you—I wanted to keep you out of it, it wasn’t because they’d threatened me,” Derek says roughly. He shifts heavily in his seat. “They did, Stiles and his mom, but it wasn’t because of that.”

Talia closes her eyes, then opens them. She loves her children, always. They are extra work, and that is simply something she recognizes; that is life when you’re a mother. She doesn’t resent it like she knows Peter often does, for all that he could, if he really wanted, choose to leave them to their own devices. 

“I just didn’t want you to know because—because we talked about it, a little.” Derek exhales as if he’s going to bang open the door and run away, and then doesn’t. “Mostly when Stiles wasn’t around. Scott really…you really do feel it, this whole thing about not having a pack. He says it isn’t like just not having friends, it’s like the phantom-limb thing people talk about. He’d have these nightmares where he’d wake up right when they got cut off—”

“You talked about him making you a werewolf,” Talia says.

She doesn’t need to look over to know her son is flinching, and dropping his head. “Yeah. I wasn’t going to drag you all into—”

Talia does look over then, and Derek has sense enough to raise his head to look back, even if he’s wincing at it. “So you were just going to run away from us once it was done? You weren’t going to tell us you were leaving?”

“I didn’t think—” Derek starts, which is the truest response. Then he collects himself, and lifts his chin. “This isn’t something you can get me out of, Mom.”

“What makes you think that’s the plan?” Talia asks.

Because that had been the plan, deep down inside of him, says the expression on his face. To leave them, to do it on his own without their involvement and to do it in a way that they couldn’t undo it later. And this is what hurts, she thinks. This is her son, this is someone she’s raised every day of his life and for whom she has done all of the truly difficult things in _her_ life, and this is what he does not want.

“You don’t have to do this for me,” Derek says, but he’s already faltering. He’s no fool, her son. He knows the difference between what you want and how you get what you want, and when a door has been shut. He doesn’t rail at it like Peter, but the lost opportunity will stay with him. She can see that. “I just want you to know.”

“Thank you,” Talia says, because as much as it hurts, at least he is letting her see this, is telling her. He is _still_ here, her son, and at the end of the day, that is what matters. “But Derek, this isn’t just for you anymore and none of us can change that. This is to make sure that all of us get through this.”

Her son hesitates, wanting to say something, and then quickly looks away. His body is tense, as if he’s rejecting what she is saying, but she can see his face reflected in the window on his side, and she can see the relief. That is what is making him feel guilty, that he is going to get what he wants, and that she is going to give him that.

They’ll have to work through that at some point, but not now. She gets out of the car, and after a couple seconds, Derek gets out too.

“Mom,” he calls sharply.

She turns and she knows she has an equally sharp look on her face. He ducks his head, knowing he was too loud, but stays where he is.

“He already knows we’re here,” he says, more quietly. His eyes move towards the fields. “Scott—Scott, listen, please don’t—just give me a sec and I’ll explain.”

Talia shifts her weight, holding onto the car door, until she’s no longer poised to stride beyond it. “I’m not angry that you wanted to be a werewolf, Derek. He should know that. It’s not his fault, what people have tried to make him do.”

“I _know_ that,” Derek says, and then he grimaces. He’s sorry, he knows that shouldn’t have been her, says his face.

He turns back to the fields.

“I am angry about what he’s been part of,” she goes on, even as her son whips back around, his stare incredulous at first, then desperately pleading. “I can’t help it. I’m your mother, and if people have hurt you, even if it wasn’t intended—I wouldn’t be your mother if I didn’t feel that way. No matter what you get involved in, that’s what’s going to matter most to me—”

“ _Mom_ ,” Derek hisses. “Mom, stop, you don’t—his own mom didn’t—when she first saw him—”

“And he hurt you. You don’t want to think about it, because you care about him, but I’m your mother so I have to care, Derek. I can’t turn that off,” Talia says, watching her son’s eyes widen. “So he has things to make up for—Scott, if you can hear me, you know that. You’re not the kind of boy to really think you can run from that. It’s going to be on your head.”

Derek jerks towards Talia, as if he wants to push himself over the top of the car. Then away, stumbling in his haste to get around the car door. He might try to say something too, but it’s too caught in his throat to make it out as words.

“So don’t run,” Talia says. “Don’t run. Come back, and make up for it. I’m angry but I’m not looking for revenge, or to make things the way they used to be. I know they can’t, and I’m just trying to find the way forward. That’s the difference here, Scott. I’m going to help you do this differently.”

Her son trips and slaps his hand against the front end of the car. As he pushes himself up, his gaze slips to her and it’s fear and rage and incomprehension all at once. This is what he wanted to leave. He thinks she’s a monster, and this is what he was running from, when he found Scott.

He turns away, and runs down to the end of the street and onto the school fields, then takes a left. She can hear his footsteps, and then a sudden, distant burst of talk. Then it’s silent.

Talia waits by the car. 

A minute passes, and then another. Her feet begin to hurt, and she rocks on them from heel to ball to heel. She thinks of something Peter once told her, in one of his most vicious moments. _You don’t even do it to lord it over the rest of us,_ he’d said, _you do it because you can’t even understand how one of us might step up._

He wishes he was in her shoes. It doesn’t matter that she’s years older, and that everything that he’s built, he’s built on the foundations she’s laid. It doesn’t matter that they have always taken the same side, always, and the only real disputes they’ve had are over the how and where and when—not the why. He wishes, her brother, that he didn’t need her. And he knows she needs him, knows that far better than any of her children, raised to believe in her in a way he was not, but that is not quite enough for his pride.

And then Talia hears a step. Then another. Three, overlapping each other in a way that makes it clear they’re from two separate people walking together, and it’s not long after that that Derek and Scott emerge from the end of the street. 

Peter had said that, and hung up, and the next day he had driven eight hours from his college to be there when the court had granted a TRO against her ex-husband. He hadn’t needed to be there. She’d kept his share of their money safe, and she and the kids weren’t at all hurt, and didn’t need him to protect them. And he wouldn’t have expected to see her at her lowest, not him, no matter what she needed to let the rest of the world see. But he’d come anyway, because at the end, it’s not about what they can make of themselves. If he really wanted that, he would have stayed away. It’s about their family. They all know that, and they all know they can’t really leave it behind.

“What do I have to do?” Scott says as soon as they’re close enough. He’s pale, and while he still looks like your average decently-fed suburban teen, he has an eaten-out thinness to his skin that speaks of what he’s lost inside. “Derek—” he doesn’t look but raises his hand when Derek tries to say something “—it’s fine. She’s right. I need to—I need to make up for things. If I have to—if I’m going to live with this, I have to—I have to do it right. I can’t just keep doing this wrong, it’s just going to make everything worse and I’ve—I’ve done so—”

“Scott,” Talia says, before she lifts her hand to his face.

He freezes. So does Derek, and then her son makes a small movement towards her. She doesn’t look over and Derek falters, and then Talia wraps her arm around Scott’s shoulders, pulling him towards her.

“Scott, I’m so sorry this happened to you,” she says, as he shivers and then crumples against her, burying his face in her shoulder. “I’m so sorry. But we’re going to figure this out, my family and you.”

Derek shifts uncertainly. He’d backed off not to stop, but to reach for Scott instead. He stands there, his hands on Scott’s arm and shoulder, and then, tentatively, moves a few inches closer. His eyes go up to Talia and she nods; he slumps in relief before fully leaning in to embrace the boy.

They’re done here.


	13. Chapter 13

Talia calls Bridget. “I found him and we’re on our way back to the house.”

_“Good. We need to finish talking,”_ Bridget says. _“I’m not leaving this town till we do.”_

“You know where the house is,” Talia says, and hangs up.

She calls Peter next. _“Good, we don’t need the distraction,”_ he says. _“If we’re going to do it this way, he wants to pass a message to his mother, so we can’t just leave Claudia to the Argents. That’s his price for leaving Derek alone.”_

Scott’s been silent for most of the ride back, but his shocked face suddenly appears in Talia’s rearview mirror. “I thought Stiles was _dead_ ,” he says.

“He’s not?” Derek says sharply. The turn of the road just then makes Scott sway out of the way and Derek sway in, switching one pale face for another. “Mom, what’s going on?”

_“You didn’t tell them?”_ Peter says. _“Talia—I’m not just about to let him go—”_

“I’m trying to drive,” Talia says.

She lowers the phone to her purse, trying to hang up, and then senses it, even before Derek lets out an inarticulate, urgent noise and grabs her shoulder. Her head goes back up as he pulls at her, and she sees the long black bag lying across the middle of the road, with the doll-like face sticking out of one end.

Talia brakes hard, swerving just clear of the dead body, but she can’t keep the wheels of her car from sliding off the road. This deep into the woods, they haven’t made the shoulder very wide, and what there is of it is a thin, cracked layer. When the wheels hit the earth, the leaves and brambles and loose rocks create enough drag to skew the car the rest of the way off the road. It's not a violent crash, but a slow, inevitable one. The airbags don’t even pop.

“Mom?” Derek says, loud and anxious.

“Mrs. Hale?” Scott calls.

He’s outside the car. The back door is open, Talia sees out of the corner of her eye as she lifts her head. She’s a little rattled but somehow avoided banging her skull against anything. Derek, climbing out after Scott, wasn’t quite as lucky, and he’s got a little blood coming down from the corner of his mouth where something must have bashed his lip.

Scott turns to him, sees the blood and grimaces. Then his eyes widen and he whips back around. He takes one step towards the body bag in the middle of the road before he suddenly jerks wildly, all four limbs flailing as if puppeted by a malicious child. Derek cries out and then Talia’s out of the car, seizing his arm and hauling him back as Scott flops to the pavement. As the woman emerges, taser in hand, from the other side of the road.

_“Talia?”_ comes the tinny electronic shout from the phone on the car seat behind her.

The woman, haggard, bright-eyed, swaps the taser for a gun, which she aims not at Derek or Talia, but at Scott. “These’ll kill him.”

“How do you know?” Derek spits out. The arm in Talia’s grip is so tense it doesn’t feel like flesh at all, but like steel cable with something humming through it. Rage, from the sound of Derek. “Did you get them from that werewolf who killed your son? She just slapped him aside, she _knew_ who he was, but he didn’t fucking like it when she said she was gonna kill Scott so she just kill—”

“They’ll _kill_ him,” she says, voice hoarse and low and not at all responding to Derek.

That’s what makes him go silent, Talia thinks as she carefully steps up beside her son. That and the look, the one that says it doesn’t really matter what they’re going to do, she’s going to do what she planned anyway because nothing else exists. She’s mad.

“Claudia,” Talia says quietly.

She looks at Talia. Something in there recognizes Talia, although it’s no more sane for it. Claudia takes a long step over to her son’s body, then drops to one knee without taking the gun off of Scott. She moves strangely, like someone who hasn’t moved in a very long time, or like something that isn’t quite used to the body it’s in. Then she reaches out with her free hand. Her fingertips touch Stiles’ white, still face and a breath shudders through her as if the pieces want to unravel from the inside out. She needs a moment.

She takes it, and moves her hand further down, zipping up the bag with one steady movement. It is her, Talia thinks. 

“Where is he?” Claudia demands.

“We’ll go to him,” Talia says. “He’s at our house.”

Derek starts to turn to look at her and she shakes her head once, slow, without looking back. She knows he is horrified and confused, and she knows it is not just at Claudia. But he will _do_ this, she wills at him. He will do it and leave it to her or they will all suffer.

He doesn’t speak or move. “We’ll go,” Talia says again, before dipping down to take up Scott’s arm.

* * *

Peter is standing out on the back porch, alone, when they drive up. Talia had slipped a text to him as they’d loaded Stiles and Scott into the car, and while she sighs, she can’t say she’s not surprised.

“Where are they?” Claudia rasps, in that same half-dead, half-distant voice.

“They’re out looking for you, and Scott,” Talia tells her. “It’s just Peter, because your son has been talking to him.”

Derek sucks his breath from shotgun and Talia resists the urge to glance at him. Claudia’s chin twitches, but she doesn’t raise her gun from where it’s resting on the limp chest of the boy leaning against her. “You two get out first. I’ll bring them in.”

“You should have Derek carry Scott,” Talia says, and this time when Derek hisses, she risks snapping her hand on his forearm where it’s resting just next to the gearshift. She can’t help a silent sigh when Claudia just continues to stare at her in the rearview mirror. “You don’t want him to carry Stiles, and this close, Stiles should be able to see what’s going on.”

“He’s been talking to you,” Claudia says flatly.

Talia shakes her head. She lets go of Derek, one finger at a time. When she finally takes her hand off, he shifts his arm away from her. Reaches his other hand around as if to rub at it, then drops both into his lap and stares straight ahead.

“To Peter,” she says. “The house is odd like that. You can’t really predict how it’ll bring a spirit back, or to who.”

Claudia doesn’t answer for a long time. She’s still there, hunched in the backseat, her dark hair so tightly skinned back from her face that it doesn’t seem like hair at all, but like a thin layer of paint. A little cover-up over what’s really behind those huge, hollowed-out eyes.

“You get out first. Both of you,” she finally says.

Derek exhales sharply. He reaches for the door, then looks at Talia. He’s starting to understand, she thinks; he’s more angry than bewildered. Good.

She nods at him and he gets out, then waits for her to get out before he tries to go to the back passenger door. Talia can’t help gripping the top of her door till pain sparks in her nails as he opens it, ducks his head in, and then eases back out with Scott lying over his shoulder. Then, facing sideways to the car, watching the gun that’s now risen to keep track of him, the two of them go up the porch steps.

“You told her. You told her about the house,” Peter says. He sees how Talia looks at the back door, which is flung open to show an indistinct darkness beyond, and a smile as narrow and sharp as a razor creeps onto his face. When he moves aside for her and puts one hand on her arm, his fingers are trembling badly. But his voice in her ear is steady. “ _When_.”

“When I was waiting to check you out of the hospital,” Talia says.

Derek twists around and stares at both of them, only to flinch when Claudia barks at him, “Keep going.”

“I’m going to take care of this family, Derek,” Talia says, looking her son in the eye. “I told both of you that.”

“If you want to make sure that happens, you should all get inside,” Claudia goes on. She’s out of the car now, the faceless black bag held awkwardly under her free arm. Her muscles are nearly splitting her skin from the effort, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from her voice. “Or I’ll take from you like I’ve had taken from me.”

“We’re not going to do that,” Talia says.

Derek flicks his eyes from Talia to Claudia and back to Talia. Then he glances at Peter, and then down at the ground. His lips pinch and peel back from his teeth, but he doesn’t, in the end, protest. He simply slides his arm under Scott’s legs and, grunting, moves Scott into a bridal carry as he goes into the house.

“Wait—”

Talia and Peter haven’t moved. Peter’s still behind Talia, still shaking where he’s holding her arm. She can’t reach for him like this, so she keeps her eye on the woman with the gun.

Claudia glowers at them, and then, abruptly, she softens. Her body sags, her lips shiver as she tries to find the words she wants. “Is he—is he here?” she says.

Peter nods. He’s looking at Talia. Then he clears his throat. “Yes. Yes, he’s here. He can see you.”

Something goes through Claudia. It looks as if she’s been shaken, and then her mouth gulps at the air as if she’s surfaced from the water. She sways, clutching her son’s body, and then the dead-eyed focus comes back into her face. “Then keep going.”

Talia turns. She catches Peter’s elbow as she does, and pushes him back a step before he pivots and turns as well. They cross to the threshold and then she hesitates, looking into the kitchen.

It’s bare, and clean. Derek is standing at the great butchering table with a limp form lying on it before him, as still as a statue—the only real movement is from the curtains fluttering from the empty wooden frames. The window glass, both the broken fragments from before and the other panes, is already gone.

“You didn’t know he’d come,” Peter says under his breath. “You didn’t know about Stiles till I told you. You couldn’t have—I didn’t know till we were here, so how—”

“I told her if she wanted to do anything for her son, then to speak only to us,” Talia says. She looks at him, and she can’t afford to smile right now, but she looks at him and he looks at her. Then down at her arm, where his hand still is. “The house made it true, but the truth never really mattered, Peter. What matters is what you said—and you were right. The werewolves aren’t going away.” 

She takes her arm away before he can press in with his fingers—they’ve stopped shaking—and pushes her sleeve down from where his grip has raised it. He stares at her arm for another moment, even as Claudia’s silhouette blocks out of the doorway, and then his eyes come up and the _look_ in them—

He wishes, her brother does. He wanted it to be him. But there is a difference between wanting and doing, and someone has to do it.

“This is the table,” Talia says, going over to it. She puts one hand on the wood, so old it’s almost soft with the decades of use. “This is where you lay out the body.”

Claudia nods, and then motions them away with the gun. Derek goes reluctantly, eyes more on Scott than on the gun, but he goes, without even Talia telling him.

They all stand back as Claudia wrestles the bag onto the table, then rolls it so that the zipper is facing Scott’s prone form. She unzips it and slides Stiles’ corpse out to lie feet to head with Scott, and the breeze picks up so that the curtains fly almost horizontal to the rod.

“Wait—” Derek says.

“Shut up,” Peter snaps.

Claudia reaches over Stiles’ waist and wraps her hand around his left hand. She holds it, almost as if she’s trying to find a pulse, before abruptly shoving it at Scott’s outstretched hand. Stiles’ fingers slide a little, leaving a dark, thick smear in their way. The door slams shut, even though it’s hung to swing the opposite way of the now-streaming curtains.

“Wait, but—but she _is_ trying to bring him back!” Derek says. He jerks in place, staring at Talia. “With Scott, she’s going to—”

The breeze suddenly screams. It’s a high, almost wordless sound, something that goes through you like an electric bolt. Derek and Peter both double over, grabbing at their eyes; Talia can’t help but slap her hands over her own, though she braces herself against the cabinets and keeps her head up to watch as Claudia is somehow spun back against the table so that she’s facing the shut door instead. Claudia’s arms strain against the air, and then she lets a shout back into it.

She’s saying something, though Talia can’t make it out. So is the wind, responding—rejecting. _Fury_ , that’s what is all around them. Fury and shock and grief, and as Claudia struggles to turn herself back around, Stiles’ body suddenly skids several inches across the table to ram into her longways.

“No!” makes it through the storm. Claudia grabs at Stiles, then slams her forearm down along his back, grabbing at his neck as if about to wring it. Her eyes are wild and black and unseeing. “No, I’ll bring you back—no, I don’t _want him_. You’re _my_ son, he’s—he’s not anything—it’s worth it! It’s worth it, you’ll see, I found out what we did wrong with Noah and for you it’s worth it, it’s worth anything to have you—”

She still has the gun. She raises it and at first it seems like she’s just trying to grabble her way back onto her feet. But then she heaves herself, impossibly, against the wind and her fingers tighten on Stiles’ neck till Talia can see the ripples of flesh between them. Claudia braces herself, mouth wide in a soundless howl, before throwing Stiles’ body into Scott’s.

Derek throws himself forward towards the table, reaching for Scott’s leg as it starts to go over, and Talia sees the gun swing about towards him. She forces her hands off the table and grabs him by the shoulder, skewing him just as the gun goes off—

The wind drops as if it caught the bullet. Derek lets out a harsh scratchy sound, not human, and slumps on his arms where he’s been tangled into Scott’s arms instead. Peter’s behind Talia, his gasping telling her he’s alive, and Claudia—

Claudia’s wide, wide eyes stare across the table at Talia. They stare, even as the body on the table— _Stiles’_ body—convulses, a foot kicking itself over the edge, an elbow pushing the whole thing back. And then Stiles sits up, eyes open, wheezing, and Claudia slowly drops to her knees. Then onto her face, and behind her, in the reopened doorway, is Bridget Argent.

“You—” Stiles gasps. “You—you killed—”

“Well, she killed your friend,” Bridget says.

He twists towards her but his entire body comes as if all of his joints are still locked together. He nearly falls off the table but somehow jams his stiff arm out and manages to knock his hand into the table, stopping himself. His face is working out the last traces of death, dragging itself into an expression of pure—and then he jerks himself about the other way. His arms swing out again, but he doesn’t keep himself from knocking face-first into the table.

“Sc—Sco—” he rasps.

“She didn’t kill him,” Talia says quietly, as Bridget looks sharply at her. Talia looks back, and then she helps Derek move Scott back onto the table and turn him so that they can see the boy’s chest rising and falling.

“She tried,” Bridget says after a moment. Her voice is hard but brittle, like a rusted iron bar.

Stiles spasms. His legs swing about like the bars of a windchime that’s been knocked askew, and then his arms follow. He’s forcing air out of his lungs, great whining heaves of it, as he jerks and twists and then flips over: one side of his mouth and jaw is misshapen. Mashed, Talia suddenly understands—the flesh is wrecked but the blood hasn’t made it up there yet.

Then he pulls at himself, like a self-spinning top, and a terrible high noise comes out of him as he turns over and then plunges off the edge of the table. Peter hurls himself forward barely in time.

Bridget steps back, her arms moving, and Talia remembers herself. “What are you doing?” she snaps.

The other woman hesitates, her gun only halfway to aiming as Peter, cursing and gasping, hauls his catch roughly to the end of the table. He’s already white-lipped and favoring his hurt side, and Stiles doesn’t seem to care much about it, even though Peter’s saved the other half of the boy’s face from damage. “Talia,” Peter grunts. “Talia, he needs—”

“You had her come here,” Bridget says.

“I told her if she wanted to see what could be done, she could come. I didn’t tell her to try and get another boy killed, and I didn’t tell her to threaten my family,” Talia says. “I don’t know anything about werewolves except what you told me. All I did was tell her what she wanted to hear so she would come, and we’d know where she was.”

For the first time Bridget’s face shows real anger. This is not what she thought and she is raging at Talia for it, and so much so that she seems to forget the gun in her hand. Her lips purse and her head snaps up as if she means to spit at Talia.

“You didn’t find her,” Talia tells her. “I didn’t hide her. If you couldn’t find her, that was all up to her, not me and you’ve been watching me this whole time so you should know. I just called her, and I told her, because I care about keeping my family safe. That’s not what you’re here to do—”

“We’re here to keep people from—”

“You’re here to limit the damage,” Talia goes on. She lowers her arms and Scott’s weight doesn’t descend with them; Derek’s taking it all on. So she pulls them in, and goes around the other end of the table. “You’re here to make sure you’re the only one causing it. It’s not the same thing, and you’re not the only one who gets to do things.”

“Well, except for one thing,” Peter adds. Still a little breathless, but he’s composed enough to offer Bridget a sarcastic smile when she looks over. Stiles is hanging motionless from his arms, limbs stuck out at odd angles with only their ends twitching. “You kill people.”

Bridget’s head stayed poised for another few seconds, and then she shifts down. She doesn’t lower her eyes—those go back to Talia and then stay there—but her shoulders and her neck adjust themselves to be less aggressive. “She wanted to kill that boy.”

A low, ragged moaning noise comes from Stiles. Peter grimaces, and then staggers backward, letting Stiles down as he does until he can sink to his knees in patent relief.

“She wanted her son back. It didn’t matter if it didn’t work on her husband—her son was dead, what else did she have to lose?” Talia says. “She was going to try again.”

“Well, he’s not dead,” Derek snaps.

“She is.” Bridget shifts again, so that even though her feet haven’t lifted, they can all tell she means to leave. “She has to stay dead. With what she tried—and with it _working_ —”

“Are you going to shoot my mom if we try to stop you?” Derek says.

Talia glances at him. He doesn’t quite look back, but his shoulder twitches. He can’t help himself; he doesn’t want to see her get hurt. She smiles and reaches over to touch his shoulder, and he lets out a long, shaking breath and sinks down so that Scott’s still-limp body is lolling over his outstretched arms against the table.

“She has to stay dead,” Bridget says again, so Talia looks up. “This has to end. One way or the other, it has to.”

“Well, who else do you have to go after?” Talia asks.

Bridget’s eyes fill with rage again. It’s palpable enough, that rage, that Talia takes a breath herself and feels it crowd up against the pulsing edge of it. This woman wishes—she _wishes_ she could go after Talia. 

She can’t. Talia is not something that falls within her Code. They both know that. She turns her head and calls for someone to come up, and they come into the house and take Claudia’s body. They don’t take anyone else.

* * *

Melissa and Chris return from leading their unnecessary wild-goose chase and the only reason Melissa doesn’t immediately storm in to see her son is because Scott is in one of the bedrooms on the second floor and Talia is still in the kitchen. Melissa has to pass Talia to go to Scott, and she does not do that without shouting at Talia for allowing Stiles anywhere near her son.

Talia doesn’t respond, only waits with a cup of cold coffee in front of her, and eventually the woman charges down the hall and up the stairs. Derek’s voice comes first, then Peter’s, and then they’re all yelling at each other for a few seconds before it falls silent. Scott speaks once and a door shuts.

Peter stalks into the kitchen. He wants to have an argument with her, but instead has it out on the back porch with Chris, who leaves off arguing with his aunt to tell Peter how much they’re going to regret playing around with necromancy, especially if they give a damn about Derek. Peter points out that the Argents haven’t been much better for Derek, and that the only thing they’ve managed to accomplish is kill people, and that even then they’re always late.

Behind her, in the hall, Talia hears the muted creaking of wooden steps. The basement stairs, not the ones to the second floor. She turns and sees the door slightly open. Not enough for her to see who’s standing behind it, just on the first step, and touching the door so that it vibrates slightly. It’s too heavy to stay open on its own.

Whoever it is, they stay for the hours and hours of debating, even though they could go down and use the same exit that Scott had. Bridget’s team isn’t going to kill them, not without breaking the family Code; out on the porch, Bridget tells Chris and Peter that again, voice harsh with anger and with fatigue. They don’t kill without reason—it was clear that Claudia was the one demanding dead werewolves, and Claudia is already dead. 

Chris says—swears—that it had better stay that way, and Peter pushes on that. He makes Chris draw the lines between himself and anything that happens to Melissa or Scott, the lines that make it clear Chris is no longer staying here. 

Then Peter comes back into the kitchen. He catches Talia’s eye and for a moment she thinks he may try the same on her. But then there’s a noise from the basement. His head jerks over. Then catches himself, and looks at her, and as she holds his gaze, she nods towards the basement door.

He doesn’t do this because she’s saying he should, says the irritated way he jerks into his first step away. He wants to do it. And in a way, which the people outside will never understand, it isn’t because he wishes ill to Derek. He wants to be the one who decides what happens, to Derek and to himself and to the entire family. He always has. And the trick, Talia thinks as she sits back, has always been to have Peter see that this means they all must stay together, in order for him to have anyone to wish he had that kind of power over.

He does see that here. He understood what they were saying, when they said that werewolves need packs, that if you go down that way, you accept that you will not do it alone. So she isn’t worried. He may hate her right now, but he understands why she did it.

So Peter disappears into the basement. It’s dark outside now, when Melissa finally comes back down the stairs. She’s slower, her steps are heavier, and when she comes into the kitchen, she is just lowering her arm as if she’d been pressing it against her face. Her eyes, however, look dry. Dry and cheerless, without even anger.

“You,” she says upon seeing Talia. “You’re still—I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you.”

“He doesn’t want to go with you,” Talia says.

Melissa exhales roughly. A little anger is in her face now. “He thinks he can’t fix what he did unless he _stays_. He—” she starts to dig her hand against her hip “—he says he shouldn’t have let Stiles tell him what to do, and he’s going to change that, he’s going to help Stiles _make up for it_ , as if—”

“Well, Claudia’s dead,” Talia says.

“Claudia _wasn’t the problem_ ,” Melissa hisses, eyes suddenly all rage.

The voices on the porch are gone. There’s just the shift of shadows behind the ripped-open white plastic bag they taped over the broken windows. One of them presses up till it’s nearly touching the plastic.

“Well, you know what the problem really was,” Talia says, very quietly. “You don’t believe your son can do it, and he does.”

Melissa knows that is the truth. She knew it when she took a step back and Scott didn’t step forward. She knew it when Talia met her in the hospital, when she said Scott didn’t know what he cared about. And she knew, says the vicious, guilty look on her face, that that is when she’s given Talia everything that Talia needed. 

“I know you think you’re just getting your family what they need,” Melissa says abruptly. “That’s how you justify it all. You’re just doing it for that.”

“Well, who else should I do it for?” Talia asks.

“You’re doing it to be _that_. You’re not doing it for them—” Melissa turns her head aside. 

She breathes a few times, as her hand clenches and unclenches by her side. And then she looks back at Talia. It’s the same look as she had in the hospital, when Talia had thought perhaps they were on the same wavelength, and not all of this would be necessary. When she’d wondered if Melissa could gain her son back. She had given Melissa the opportunity.

“When I come back, my son had better still be here,” is what Melissa says. “I’ll be coming for him. For _my son_. And if he’s not here…if he’s not in this house, I’ll be coming for you. Remember that.”

So the woman still thinks that door is open. Talia nods, but in simple acknowledgement of what was said and nothing more. It isn’t up to her at this point, really, but she can see that there is no use in saying so to Melissa.

She lets Melissa go, out onto the porch to rejoin the Argents. Perhaps they’ll teach her something useful—the other way around seems more likely to Talia, but either way, it will give Talia time enough to settle her family in their new situation.

Talia drinks her coffee, cold and stale as it is. When she lowers her cup, she notices that her sleeve has ridden up again. She reaches for it, pauses, and then unbuttons it instead of pushing the cuff back down. She gets up from her seat and turns away from the table, unraveling the bandage from around her forearm as she does. The bite-mark underneath is still visible but the skin is no longer torn, just bruised.

She doesn’t think that she feels it yet, but as she pauses in the hallway, she sees her reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall and she catches a flash of red in her eyes. This isn’t something they talked about, when Bridget told her all about werewolves, but she’s not surprised to see it. After all, it’s not as if Scott really made her into one; he hadn’t wanted to be an alpha in the first place. Claudia and Stiles had set it up for him, for their own reasons. It hadn’t really been his kill, and the power in him had never really settled. He hadn’t wanted it to.

As far as she’s concerned, she accepted what he didn’t want.

What you want is what matters. This house taught Talia that, when she was very young. It had wanted to frighten her, to get into her, for its own reasons, but she hadn’t wanted that. She had told it so, and had stood up in the middle of the night and felt all of its _want_ …and it hadn’t been enough. Not against her. The house is haunted, but she isn’t.

And if her family needs to become werewolves to keep the world at bay, then that is what she will see them do. It’s just a matter of what she wants.

So Talia opens the door to the basement, and goes down the stairs. 

“Peter?” she calls softly. “Peter, can you come here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talia has been improvising for a lot of this. She has been pulling strings, and she has been guessing and keeping information from other characters, but she's also just been adjusting her plans as things come up. The point is her complete self-belief in her goals and her approach, compared to the other characters, allows her to read them far better and to react quicker than they do. And also, that her approach is to get her family what they want but in such a way that she is still in control. So when Peter convinced himself that they weren't getting out of this without werewolves running things, Talia knew who was going to need to be that werewolf.
> 
> The whole idea of a _true_ alpha being about some sort of objective measure of your morality is pretty flat. I think there is a reasonable argument to make that it's actually about self-belief, and the superior ability to focus (given the other talk about werewolves losing themselves in the animalistic side). Talia's already faced down ghosts who've tried to possess and terrify her, so she's coming into being a werewolf with a lot more practice in maintaining her identity than your average teenager. 
> 
> And, well, yeah, this reading of her is pretty sociopathic. Which is also why she's rather dismissive of all of the future potential problems she's set up along the way: she doesn't process that type of emotion. 
> 
> Anyway, if you really wanted to set up a blood feud, I think this is a lot creepier and more horrific than Kate Argent.


End file.
